


Join the Dots

by lustmordred



Category: White Collar
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Multi, Past Rape, Polyamory, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 07:07:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lustmordred/pseuds/lustmordred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter had been noticing it; Neal didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat much, he didn’t crack jokes sometimes even with the window for one wide-open and clear for him. Even Peter’s “I can do whatever I want with you” crap that he was always tossing out at him didn’t get the same reaction that it once had. When he said things like that, Neal’s face went blank and he didn’t say anything. He didn’t get mad about it, didn’t even get his feelings hurt. Peter had been dropping a few hints here and there about Neal’s health lately, but hadn’t yet come right out and said anything. Neal figured it was because, no matter what was wrong with him, he still did the work. Maybe he didn’t give Peter enough credit, but sometimes he figured Peter didn’t deserve much credit. Neal counted on him leaving him mostly alone as long as he wasn’t off his game, and he wasn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Join the Dots

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between the events of S02E01 “Withdrawal” and S02E08 “Company Man.” The title is from the title of an album by The Cure, but also a reference to the pointillism painting style of Georges Seurat.

The bruises go away, and so does how you hate,   
and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life   
is something you have earned.

—Jonathan Safran Foer  
 _Everything is Illuminated_

 

The first time Neal saw _that_ look on Peter’s face was when he walked down the staircase at June’s that first morning, the morning of the day that would become the first day of the rest of his life, to meet Peter for work. Peter tried to cover it by grimacing and insulting his clothes, but Neal knew that covetous look for what it was. If anyone knew that look, he did. Of course, it was only a few days before Peter and Elizabeth’s tenth wedding anniversary, so Neal could understand his dismay. 

Neal had been pleased then, amused to see it there in his eyes, in that instant when Peter looked stunned just before he recovered. Now Neal walked through the door that Peter pulled open for him, sat down at his old desk, and felt nothing at the way Peter’s eyes lingered on him except a passing annoyance at the little prick of awareness that came with being stared at. 

Peter was still holding the door and Neal looked up at him and raised his eyebrows. Peter let go of the door and it swung closed. 

“So, the arrangement’s the same as before,” Peter said redundantly. 

Neal put his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. “I know the arrangement, Peter.”

“Right,” Peter said. He had a file in one hand and he tapped it against his thigh. “Ah… Just so you know, the GPS tracker’s more accurate than the last one. So…”

Neal waited for him to finish what he was going to say, but he didn’t. Peter stood there uncomfortably and said nothing for a minute. “How you doing?”

Neal blinked and considered. Not how he was doing--he knew--but what he was going to tell him. “June came and got me from the motel,” he finally said, not answering the question at all. “I’m back at my old place.”

“I can see that,” Peter said, gesturing at the hat Neal had set down on his desk. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I’m fine,” Neal said, a touch more sharply than he would have said it if it were actually true. “I’m dealing with it.”

“Okay. Good,” Peter said. He turned away and started by the desks and up the stairs. “We’ve got a case, so after we meet with the bank managers about their security, we have other business.”

“Sure,” Neal said. His hands began to shake and he unfolded them and put them in his lap under the desk, staring straight ahead until the feeling of claustrophobia and panic subsided. “Damn it.”

“You okay, Caffrey?” Diana asked, pausing by his desk. 

“I’m _fine_ ,” Neal snapped. He tilted his head to look up at her and watched the surprised expression on her face appear and harden. “I wish everyone would quit asking me that.”

“I retract the question then,” Diana said. She walked away. “You better get upstairs.”

Neal went upstairs to the conference room, but he cursed himself the entire way for being careless and giving himself away like that. He wasn’t running a con, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t that overemotional wreck of a guy, not for these people, not now and not ever. The Neal Caffrey they knew, that they were used to and comfortable with, he wouldn’t snap at Diana. He would smile, tell her how glad he was to be back, make some joke about how the coffee in the office wasn’t so bad after all. That’s what he would have done. And now? Now he would go and apologize. Then he’d start trying to fit the mask back into place and catch this Architect guy for Peter.

~~*~~

In the evenings, Neal liked to paint. He did it to clear his head, like he had told Peter the first time he asked. There was really nothing better for it. His mind just cleared and the focus of his concentration became brush strokes and colors and paint thinner. Lately, since Peter had got him out of prison again, since Kate had blown up and his chance at freedom and a slice of the normal life with it, Neal had been painting a lot more. Sometimes all night. Sometimes until dawn. Then without sleep or breakfast, off to work. Off to stick his fingers into Peter’s world and watch the chaos such contact caused. 

Peter had been noticing it; Neal didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat much, he didn’t crack jokes sometimes even with the window for one wide-open and clear for him. Even Peter’s “I can do whatever I want with you” crap that he was always tossing out at him didn’t get the same reaction that it once had. When he said things like that, Neal’s face went blank and he didn’t say anything. He didn’t get mad about it, didn’t even get his feelings hurt. Peter had been dropping a few hints here and there about Neal’s health lately, but hadn’t yet come right out and said anything. Neal figured it was because, no matter what was wrong with him, he still did the work. Maybe he didn’t give Peter enough credit, but sometimes he figured Peter didn’t deserve much credit. Neal counted on him leaving him mostly alone as long as he wasn’t off his game, and he wasn’t. 

Mozzie wasn’t at Neal’s place and Neal was painting with his back to the open door when he felt that itch between his bare shoulder blades and knew Peter was watching him from the doorway. He didn’t turn around and he didn’t stop painting to go get his shirt and put it on like he wanted to. He had bruises and even if that wasn’t why--or at least not the only reason--Peter was staring at him, Neal wouldn’t put it on. It would be a tell, one that Peter would pick up on immediately. 

“What do you want, Peter?” Neal said. He leaned in to add the touch of pink on the lips of the girl in the portrait he was painting that would make them look wet and soft. “It’s kind of late. I’m not in the mood for cheap wine and reminiscing if that’s what this is.”

“No, it’s… I’m not sure what it is,” Peter said. He came into the room and stood looking at the painting over Neal’s shoulder. 

“Well, that’s honest,” Neal said. 

“That’s a Vermeer,” Peter said. 

“The Girl with the Pearl Earring,” Neal said. He put his paintbrush into a glass of turpentine. “I hear they made a movie.”

Peter chuffed soft laughter. “I guess,” he said. “Did you know he used crushed lapis lazuli for the pigment in the turban?”

“I did know that,” Neal said, smiling faintly. “ _I_ didn’t, if you‘re wondering.” He turned around and found Peter standing too close to him. “Peter, you should go home.”

Peter swallowed and took a step back, becoming aware of their proximity. “El knows,” he said. “I called her.”

Neal crossed his arms over his chest. “Knows what?”

“That I’m over here to talk to you,” Peter said. 

“Ah. Does she know why?” Neal asked. “Because that would put her a step ahead of me.”

“Oh. Right. It’s just that… you did good today,” Peter said. “I mean… Hell, this is awkward. I’m not good at this kind of thing. You did good work today. I’m proud of you. I know it’s been hard. These last few weeks, I mean.”

“Peter, you’re not my father,” Neal said. It wasn’t the first time he had thought it, but it was the first time he had said it aloud. Peter’s reaction was… predictable. 

“I’m not _trying_ to be, Caffrey,” he said. “I just thought--I just _think_ … I just think that maybe I don’t say it enough. That no one does.”

Neal smirked. “Positive reinforcement? Nice.”

“It’s been known to work,” Peter said.

“Uh-huh. In the middle of the night, that’s what you’re over here for?” Neal asked. 

He unfolded his arms and went around Peter to pick up a wine glass and a bottle of Shiraz. He uncorked the bottle and poured some, then took a drink, still standing there with his back once again to Peter. He knew that some of the bruises on his waist and around his arms were fingerprints and he could feel them burning as he stood there. He didn’t know if Peter would recognize what they were. Most of them were faded to yellow spots so they could be anything, he supposed. Peter also had a remarkable knack for self-delusion, one that he would have denied to his dying breath if Neal were to mention it aloud. For his own reasons, obviously he didn’t.

“Okay, Peter. Well, we’ve had the pep talk,” Neal said. “I did good. That’s great. Pretty soon you’ll have me drooling on you like Pavlov’s dog whenever you say something like that. I notice you’re still here though.”

“What happened to you?” Peter demanded, ignoring what Neal had said and his unwelcoming manner completely. “You’re all bruised up and those are at least three weeks old and still there. What happened, Neal?”

Neal turned around and propped his hip against the counter, eying Peter with a remote expression. “I was in prison, Peter,” he said flatly. “This time, some of my fellow inmates were guys I put there. I’m a traitor to my kind. What do you think happened?”

And Peter, of course, looked surprised. Like it hadn’t even occurred to him that Neal might not be so popular in prison after being his pet convict long enough for the word to get around. “Jesus, Neal,” he said. “Shit, I didn’t think… I mean… Why didn’t they have you separated or--”

“Yeah, they don’t do that for you when you’re not actually a cop,” Neal said. He held up his wine glass in a silent toast to Peter. “They’d probably do it for you though.”

“Good thing we’ll never have to find that out,” Peter said. 

Neal didn’t roll his eyes, but he wanted to. “Yeah.”

Peter looked apologetic, but he did not apologize. “Well, anyway, you’re alright then?”

“I’m fine,” Neal said. He tipped his glass up and drank the rest of his wine in a couple of swallows, then put the glass aside. 

“Take it easy, you’ve got work tomorrow,” Peter said. 

He was trying for levity, but Neal wasn’t in the mood. “Yeah, which is why I should go to bed and you should go home,” he said. He pushed away from the counter and started toward the bed, hoping Peter would take the hint. 

He did. He watched Neal until he reached the bed, but then he turned and walked to the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Get some rest, Caffrey.”

“Good night, Peter,” Neal said. He sat on the edge of the bed and waited for him to leave. “Hit the light on your way out, will you?” 

Peter turned the light off and closed the door. Neal listened to him go down the stairs and out the front door, and only then did he lay down. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but his mind wouldn’t be still and he kept seeing Kate waving to him from the doorway of a jet. He kept feeling hands grabbing him, fingers biting into his skin hard enough to leave bruises that would last for weeks. He kept hearing laughter and panting breath, which smelled like teeth that hadn’t been brushed in a while. The decay of calcium and bad instant coffee on a hot tongue. There were eyes waiting for him in the dark behind his eyelids and they had hunger in them and an endless kind of predatory patience. 

Neal got out of bed and flipped the lights back on. He refilled his wine glass, turned back to the painting of the girl watching him from his easel and picked up a clean paintbrush.

~~*~~

Peter’s job was trying to catch bad men doing bad things for a lot of money. Working with him meant that was Neal’s job now, too. Which sometimes meant Neal ended up with a loaded gun pointed at him and a very scared, very angry person on the other end of it. So far, he had never been shot, but the law of averages being what it was, he expected that to change any day. 

“You really don’t want to do that,” Neal told the man holding the gun on him. He was a banker named Robert Anderson. “Think about it.”

“I am thinking about it,” Anderson said.

He took a step closer and jabbed the gun at Neal and, even though he wasn’t holding it right and Neal could probably snatch it out of his hand before he pulled the trigger, Neal was still kind of hoping Peter would come through the door and stop Anderson so that he wouldn’t have to. 

“If I kill you, no one knows anything,” Anderson said. 

“No one knows what, Anderson?” Neal asked. 

“Shut up,” Anderson snapped. He stepped closer and this time he pressed the barrel of the gun to Neal’s temple. “Just shut your mouth. Let me think.”

Neal shut up. He rolled his eyes to the side to look at the door, but no one came through it. Something was wrong. “Can I say something?”

“What?” Anderson asked. He glared at Neal. “Fine. What? Say it.”

“If you kill me, that’s murder,” Neal said calmly. Anderson had shifted to stand at an angle so that he could look toward the exits of the building while holding the gun on Neal. Neal’s raised left hand was next to his elbow. “You know, murder’s a whole different animal. It’s not money laundering. Murder will get you at least twenty-five years in a cell with a guy twice your size who doesn’t have your manners, Anderson. You know what I mean?”

Anderson’s tongue darted out to lick his lips nervously. “Shut up.”

“I should know,” Neal said, ignoring him as he let his hand slowly inch closer to Anderson’s gun. “I only got four years, but you know, that’s four years stuffed in an eight-by-ten cell next door to a bunch of other guys also stuffed into eight-by-ten cells. Not a woman in sight. It messes with you. Don’t think it won’t.” He looked right into Anderson’s eyes then and Anderson’s fingers were clumsy with sweat on his gun. “You’re not a bad looking guy, Robby. Imagine your first day, huh? They might not get you that first day, but they’ll get you. Any day now… mhmm. Imagine five guys in the showers, holding you down, taking turns fucking you in the ass while they bash your head against the tile floor. Now imagine that for _twenty-five years_.”

Anderson’s eyes were wide and his hand trembled. “You’re making that up. That doesn’t really happen. You’re lying.”

Neal caught his wrist and twisted just as Anderson pulled the trigger. The bullet went wild and the report left a ringing in Neal’s ears. He shoved Anderson back and wrenched the gun out of his hand as he surged to his feet. Somewhere a door crashed open and Neal heard it, knew it was Peter and Jones and a whole pack of other agents, but he didn’t look around. He ejected the clip from the gun, jacked the slide to eject the round in the chamber and threw the weapon down at Anderson’s feet. 

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I am lying. But I think you’re about to find out.”

“Neal!” Peter shouted. He pushed through the other agents to find Neal. He put a hand on his arm when he reached him. “Are you alright?”

Neal looked down at Peter’s hand and forced a smile. “I’m great.” When Peter just gave him a concerned, searching look and didn’t remove his hand, Neal shrugged him off. “I’m fine, Peter. I’m going to go wait outside.”

“Jones will go with you,” Peter said. He went over to where Jones was currently handcuffing Anderson to take over. “He’ll make sure you don’t go anywhere.”

An angry retort was on the tip of Neal’s tongue, so bitter he wanted to spit it out, but he just gritted his teeth and went outside with Jones. He leaned back against a black car and lifted his leg up for Jones to reattach the tracking anklet and didn’t say anything. It had been a long time since something like that, something petty like the things Peter was always so casually saying about the anklet, had made him so damn mad. 

“He’s worried about you is all, you know,” Jones said. He stood up and Neal put his leg back down. “We were a little slow back there.”

Neal turned sharp, pale eyes on him. “Oh, do you _think_?”

Jones rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “Yeah, well. It happens,” he said. “But Burke, he’s… He heard what you said in there. We all did. He--”

“Just shut up, Jones, okay?” Neal stared at him until Jones looked away. “He had a gun to my head. I had to say _something_.”

“Then you weren’t--”

“No,” Neal said. 

“Because if you want to--”

“No.”

“There’s a therapist who--”

“ _No_.”

Neal plucked the bug in his jacket pocket out with two fingers and reached over to deposit it in Jones’s coat pocket. He did it slowly so he could see it, nothing tricky, just giving it back. He smiled at Jones and if it wasn’t quite steady, they could all blame it on Richard Anderson and his 9mm Glock. 

“Sorry, I’m a little shook up,” Neal told Jones, slipping back into character. “Thanks though, really. Shrinks just aren’t my thing. They ask too many questions.”

“Yeah, me either,” Jones said. 

A few minutes later, Peter came out of the warehouse and headed straight for them. He looked angry and walked with those chopping strides of his that meant he had purpose and someone was in trouble. Behind him, Anderson was being escorted to a car by two agents Neal didn’t know by name. 

“What the hell was that?” Peter demanded. 

It took Neal a second to realize that Peter was talking to him, not to Jones. “What was what, Peter?”

Peter threw his arm back toward the warehouse, pointing. “Back there!” he said, voice rising toward a shout. “What the hell was that _back there_?”

Neal cocked his head. He was genuinely puzzled. “That?” he said.

“Yeah, _that_ , Caffrey. What the hell was _that_?!”

Neal felt his eyes go blank and distant and saw the way the muscle in Peter’s jaw tightened when he saw it happen. “That was what you asked me to do, Peter,” Neal said. “It’s what I’m here for, remember?”

“You could have been _shot_!” Peter said. He really was shouting now and Neal had to wonder at it. “That guy has a gun on you and what do you do?! You egg him _on_! Do you have a goddamn death wish, Caffrey? Because if you do, you better let me know. I don’t _need you_ if you’re going to be trying to get yourself killed on my watch!”

“Oh, don’t you…” Neal cut himself off and took a calming breath. 

Jones looked uncomfortable and excused himself to go help with the arrests.

“I am always in danger of being _shot_ , Peter,” Neal said. He was calm, but Peter didn’t seem to care. He wasn’t taking what he said any better. “That’s what I’m for. Don’t pretend like you didn’t know that. I’m always getting put in these situations. I’m not one of the good guys, Peter, and bad guys like to play with guns, especially when you’re trying to take their money and arrest them. You want to act like you’re just figuring that out, fine, but I’m not stupid. Every time you take that anklet off me, I could end up dead. I know you know that, so knock it off.”

“You didn’t have to antagonize him,” Peter snapped. “If you _want_ to die, there are other ways of doing it.”

“I know. Ways that won’t get you a mountain of paperwork and a spanking,” Neal said indifferently. At the murderous glare Peter sent his way, Neal put his hands up. “He had a gun to my head, Peter. What would you have had me do?”

Peter stepped into him, crowding him back against the hood of the car. Neal backed up and stared back at him in surprise as Peter glared daggers at him. “I would have had you shut your damn mouth, Caffrey,” he said. “That’s what I would have had you do with a gun to your head. You’re so smart, the smartest person I’ve ever known, Neal, then _be_ smart. That in there, that was stupid.”

“Because you were going to save me, right?” Neal said. He spoke just as softly, just as angrily as Peter, and he didn’t flinch away from him, though he wanted to. “I’m supposed to just wait for you to come to the rescue and not do anything. He’s a banker, not a mob boss or a hit man, he’s just a harmless banker. There’s a problem with that, Peter, and you know what it is?”

“What?” Peter asked. 

Neal put a hand to Peter’s chest and shoved. “ _He pulled the trigger_!” Neal took a breath and let it out. Calmer, he said, “If I had waited for you and done nothing, you’d be sending a cleaning team out here right now to scrape my admirably smart brains off the wall. I did what I had to do.”

“You always do,” Peter said in that cryptic, sarcastic way he had. 

Neal turned and put his shoulder against Peter to push him back more so he could get out from between him and the car. “Yeah, I do,” he said. He opened the back door of the car. 

“What are you doing?” Peter said. 

Neal looked at him over his shoulder and he felt his hands shaking. He wasn’t completely sure if it was all anger, either. “I’m getting in the car,” he said. “I’ll wait here. Jones put the anklet back on, so you know where I’m at if I’m lying, but I’m not. I’m done for now, Peter. I want to go home, so I’ll wait.”

He got in the car and Peter took the door and slammed it behind him before Neal could close it himself. “Fine. You’d just get in the way now anyway.”

Neal pretended like he hadn’t heard him and sat there staring straight ahead out through the windshield until Peter had left him alone. When he was gone, Neal put his face in his cupped, shaking hands and tried like hell not to break down and cry. Neal wasn’t a big crier, so mostly he succeeded.

~~*~~

It had been a little over a week since the last time someone had put a gun to his head and Peter expected Neal to read up on case files. The downside being that he would probably have to at least look at the case files, the upside being that none of the cases he had given him files for looked like something that would end with Neal getting shot. Then again, it was rare for something that ended with him getting shot at to actually _look_ like the sort of thing that would get him shot at. 

Mozzie was sitting at the table drinking a glass of Pinot Noir and reading a book about the Loch Ness monster when Neal got home. He sat back and picked up his wine glass when Neal entered the apartment. He looked smug for some unfathomable reason.

Neal decided he was too tired to even ask and went to check his refrigerator for something edible that wouldn’t call for a lot of preparation. He had a block of parmesan cheese, some broccoli with the florets turning yellow and two eggs. He closed the fridge and went to find the takeout menus. 

“Chinese or Indian?” Neal asked, holding up two menus for Mozzie.

“Chinese,” Mozzie said. “Wait… is it that place down the street?”

“Yes,” Neal said. 

“Indian then,” Mozzie said decisively. “What about Thai?”

“I’ll just order a pizza,” Neal said, putting the menus away. He took his phone out and dialed. “Pepperoni alright?”

Mozzie shrugged. “Plebeian.”

Which meant he would eat it anyway. Neal rolled his eyes and ordered a large pepperoni pizza when the phone was answered. He hung up and looked at Mozzie, sitting at his table, drinking his wine, looking satisfied as a fat, spoiled cat without a care in the world. It was the way Mozzie usually looked, but for some reason it suddenly grated on Neal. 

He paced restlessly around the table and out onto the terrace. He leaned against the wall and stared out at the city, at the fabulous view, and didn’t see it at all. He didn’t feel like eating, but he would eat. He felt like sleeping, but he _couldn’t_ sleep. He wanted to be left alone and he never wanted to be left alone again. Neal sighed and dragged his hands through his hair. It was too cold outside tonight and, though Mozzie was Mozzie, he was still a guest so it was probably pretty rude for Neal to leave him alone at the table while he had himself a claustrophobic moment of panic. 

Yanking his tie loose, Neal went back inside and closed the French doors behind him. He took his tie off and opened the first three buttons of his shirt before he sat down at the table across from Mozzie, who was still reading and didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong. 

“You know there’s a Loch Ness-type monster in a lake up in Montana?” Mozzie asked without looking up from his book. He picked up his wine glass and drank. 

Neal shrugged and stared down at the table in front of him. 

Mozzie started talking about prehistoric lake creatures and giant squids and how the Loch Ness monster wasn’t alone and how that was somehow connected to folklore and mythology, specifically something to do with fairies and selkies and how it appeared in cultures all over the world all the way back to the time of King Arthur and Neal wasn’t really listening. He couldn’t make himself give a damn about the Loch Ness monster and its monster cousins. His mind kept drifting back to his eight-by-ten cell and the flat cot mattress in it that he hadn’t slept on much. To the way it felt to be pushed down into it so hard, by someone so heavy and careless and violent, that he couldn’t draw breath, either because his face was pushed against it or because the body on top of him was pushing down too hard for his lungs to expand. He kept thinking about the letter opener on Jones’s desk that looked like a miniature claymore. How easy it would be to palm it as he leaned over to ask him a stupid question. It was sharp. He could kill somebody with a tiny blade like that. He could kill Jones or Diana or Peter or even himself. It would probably be easier--for everyone--if he did it to himself. He had been thinking about it a lot lately. Peter had been right about that and not even known it. Neal couldn’t even say why he hadn’t already done it, except maybe he was still looking for the right tool. 

“Shut _up_!” Neal suddenly shouted. 

Mozzie cut off right in the middle of something he had been saying about a lake monster in Lake Tahoe and stared at him with his mouth hanging open in surprise. “Uh, Neal?”

Neal lifted his head and stared across the table at him. “Get out,” he said. When Mozzie didn’t move, Neal raised halfway out of his seat to lean over the table and yell it. “ _Get out_!”

Mozzie blinked his bugged out little eyes at him and got up, backing away from the table in alarm. “Whoa. Neal… are you okay?”

Neal didn’t say anything, just stood and pointed at the door. 

Mozzie swallowed, nodded his head and left. “I’m sorry, Neal,” he said as he closed the door. He didn’t sound like he knew what he was sorry for though. 

Neal sat back down when he was gone and stared at the place where Mozzie had been sitting. The book was still there, still open on the table to the page about Lake Tahoe. Their monster was apparently called Tahoe Tessie. Mozzie’s glass of wine was mostly empty and Neal couldn’t remember if he had a bottle of Pinot Noir. Probably, since he doubted Mozzie would have brought his own. 

He glanced up and caught his own haggard reflection in the glass of the French doors. He looked like hell. Hardly like himself at all. He stared at his own face in the glass and a memory flashed behind his eyes, of his face reflected in the burnished metal of the toilet in his cell after he had thrown up the come he’d been forced to swallow until it felt like the veins in his throat must burst, his stomach must be bleeding. His eyes weren’t blue in the glass, they stared back at him as black holes, black holes full of stars and city lights. 

There was a soft knock at the door and Neal jumped. It was just the pizza he thought a moment later, though his heart was still hammering in his temples as he got up to answer the door. 

Mozzie stood there on the other side, looking nervous, holding a pizza box. “Um… I forgot my book,” he said. 

“I’m sorry, Moz,” Neal said. He didn’t just say it because he was afraid to be alone. He really was sorry. He couldn’t even promise it wouldn’t happen again though, because it might. He just wasn’t dealing with it very well this time. “I didn’t mean… I mean, I shouldn’t have…”

“It’s okay,” Mozzie said. He seemed to relax a little, but he still eyed Neal warily, not sure what to do about him. “If you want me to go, it’s fine. I mean… you know. I’ll go. It’s just…” He took a deep breath and braced himself for Neal to yell at him again. “I don’t think you need to be alone right now.”

Neal shook his head and swallowed around the big, pulsing lump in his throat. “No,” he said, his voice rough and cracking. “No, I really don’t.”

Mozzie scuffed a foot against the floor and waited, but Neal didn’t say anything else. “Neal, the pizza’s going to get cold,” he said. 

“Oh,” Neal said. “Right.” 

He stepped out of the way and held the door for Mozzie. After a few seconds, Mozzie walked through it and went to put the pizza down on the table. Neal got them plates and another bottle of wine and Mozzie marked his place in his book and put it away. 

They sat down and Neal filled his wine glass. Mozzie cleared his throat. “So, are we not going to talk about it?”

Neal drank his wine and watched Mozzie with lifted brows. “Do you really want to talk about it?” he asked when he had put it down. “Do you want to know what _it_ is?”

“I think you need to talk about it,” Mozzie said, peeling a pepperoni off his slice of pizza. 

“That’s not an answer,” Neal said, except it kind of was an answer. It was no.

Mozzie shrugged and continued to look uncomfortable. “I’m not good at this stuff.”

“Eat your pizza, Mozzie,” Neal said gently. “It’s okay.”

Mozzie nodded. He picked up his pizza and took a bite. “Did you know there are fish in this lake over in California that don’t live anywhere else except in Africa? I was reading something about it yesterday and there’s even a theory that they swim right through the center of the earth. Which of course is _impossible_.”

~~*~~

Neal sat in the chair across from Peter, who was reading something in a file at his desk and doing a very good impression of a man who found it easy to ignore him. Neal had picked up an espresso at a corner café on his way to work and hadn’t brought him one. He assumed Peter was pouting about it in the way he had where he just pretended like he wasn’t pouting, he was just too busy to notice Neal at all. Neal thought it was pretty damn childish. He drank his coffee and said nothing while he waited for Peter to stare at the file the appropriate amount of time it would take to make him feel better before acknowledging him. 

Finally he did. He sighed, closed the file on his desk and looked Neal in the eye. And Neal realized he had miscalculated. Peter hadn’t been pouting after all, he’d been bracing himself.

“What?” Neal asked. “You’ve got that look.”

Peter quirked a brow. “What look?”

“That one,” Neal said, gesturing at him with his coffee cup. “It’s your ‘I’ve got bad news that I don’t want to talk about’ look. It’s usually followed by your suspicious ‘Don’t do anything stupid, Neal’ look, which by the way, I hate. So, yeah, _what_?”

He was thinking maybe it was something about Kate’s death. Maybe Peter was going to finally stop lying to him and tell him what he had found out about it. He knew Peter was looking into it. He also knew Peter was keeping it all to himself and maybe now he was finally going to tell him. It would certainly explain the look if he was. 

“I don’t have a look,” Peter said, annoyed by the idea that he might be that easy to read. “There’s no look. You made that up just now, didn’t you?”

“No. You have a lot of looks,” Neal said. 

Peter frowned at him. “I do not,” he said. He considered it and asked, “Do you have names for all of them?”

“Most of them,” Neal said. “Come on, Peter. What is it?”

Peter put his elbows on his desk and drummed his fingers on top of the file he’d just closed. He took a breath and said, “Are you on drugs?”

Neal laughed. When he saw that Peter was serious, he stopped and stared at him. “Am I on _drugs_? Seriously? No, Peter. What’s in that file?”

“Another copyright infringement case. It’s nothing,” Peter said. “I’m serious, Neal. If you are, then you need to stop it. I can’t do anything about it if they want to test you and it comes up positive. You know I can’t protect you from that.”

Neal cocked his head and peered at Peter thoughtfully. “I’ve done them before. Sometimes you have to, the kind of people I have to socialize with in--Wait, why are you asking me if I’m on drugs?”

Peter sighed and threw up his hands. “I don’t know,” he said sarcastically. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

Neal looked down at himself. Tie was blue silk, suit was charcoal grey and cost more than Peter probably made in three months, shoes were Italian leather, his fingernails were clean and even. “I dressed myself this morning, so yes. What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m serious, Neal. You look like… like shit. There, I said it,” Peter said. “You do. Like maybe… I don’t know. Maybe you’re not eating or sleeping or something. Or maybe you’re on drugs.”

“Well, I’m not,” Neal said. He was getting annoyed now, but he was also thinking that, since Peter brought it up, drugs might not be such a bad idea. 

“Not what?” Peter asked. “Eating? Sleeping?”

Neal sighed. “Not doing drugs, Peter.”

Peter narrowed his eyes and sat back in his chair. “Let me see your arms,” he said. 

Neal blinked at him in surprise. “You’re not serious.”

Peter made a gesture with two fingers for Neal to stand up and show him. “Come on. Show me.”

Neal ran his tongue over the back of his teeth, crushing down on the urge to walk out and tell him to go fuck himself. It would do nothing for him but confirm to Peter the ridiculous assumption he had made. He stood up and practically threw his jacket off. Eyes blazing with anger, Neal unbuttoned the cuffs on the left sleeve of his shirt and rolled it up, then the other, and held his arms straight out to show Peter the insides of his elbows, where there were no needle marks to be seen. 

“Satisfied?” Neal snapped. “Or would you like to swab my nose, too? Maybe I should piss in a cup. Go get it right now, if that’s what it takes.”

Peter shook his head, but he still looked suspicious and unconvinced. “Did you go out last night?”

Neal pulled his sleeves down and buttoned the cuffs. “You tell me,” he said. “I thought you checked the anklet every morning.”

“Not _every_ morning,” Peter said. 

“And you thought you’d ask to see if I’d lie about it?” Neal asked. He laughed a little and put his jacket back on. “I went out and picked up groceries. I went home and made chicken marinara. I painted and went to bed.”

All of which was true except for the going to bed part. He hadn’t slept in three days. 

“Who did you cook for?” Peter asked, this question sounded more like genuine curiosity rather than part of the interrogation. “A woman?”

“Myself,” Neal said. “And Mozzie, if you have to know. Are we done?”

Peter was still frowning, but he nodded. “You don’t look good, that’s all.”

“I’m fine,” Neal said. 

“Yeah, that’s what I hear,” Peter said. 

Neal looked at him sharply, but Peter just shook his head, stood and left the room. “Diana’s got something for you to do,” he said. “And I’m sure you’ve still got paperwork to finish.”

Neal stood in Peter’s office for a few minutes after he was gone and thought about what had just happened. He wasn’t that surprised by Peter’s accusation once he really considered it. He probably did look like hell. Peter wasn’t the first person to think something was wrong with him. They weren’t wrong either; something was. The fact that it showed on his face though, that was new. He wasn’t that easy to read. He _couldn’t_ be, not and do what he did. If this kept on, he wouldn’t be good to the FBI for anything _but_ paperwork. 

That was worrisome, but in the back of his mind, under that worry, was a small, quiet voice whispering to him in sense memory about what it felt like to just forget about it all for a while.

~~*~~

It took him two days once the idea presented itself to him. Then Neal went looking for some cocaine. He had done a variety of drugs over the years, just sampling them so he wouldn’t look suspicious or when it was expected. Sometimes _not_ doing the drugs, no matter what else he could do, was the deal-breaker. So he had done them and he had found that he rather liked cocaine. 

The rat-faced little pusher Neal approached didn’t have coke. He was out, he said. He did have something else though. Something a lot like coke, only stronger. It would do the same thing, he said. He would like it, he said, and if he didn’t like it, then Neal could come find him later and he’d make sure he had some cocaine for him then. But he would like it, the guy promised. So Neal bought it and hoped it wouldn’t actually poison him. Then he decided that maybe he didn’t even care if it did poison him, because if Peter found out about it--something he had an annoying and persistent talent for--he’d probably throw him back in prison for good and forget about him.

It was Friday night, June was out with some of her friends for the evening, and Neal didn’t have to work the next day. He got Chinese takeout on his way home and ate it with a glass of merlot while he looked at the crank sitting in the middle of the table in front of him. It was in a small plastic Ziploc baggie of the sort that had probably been invented specifically because they were used by drug dealers. Drug dealers and people who did crafts with beads, but mostly drug dealers. 

Neal finished eating and decided that Chinese food was better with white wine. He refilled his wine glass and stared at the drugs before him on the table. Abruptly, he pushed the Chinese food containers aside and picked it up. He shook the baggie in front of his eyes, then opened it and tapped some of the powder out on the tabletop. Experimentally, Neal touched his finger to it and dabbed it on his tongue. It burned in an acidic way and he flicked his tongue in disgust. The taste of it lingered on the back of his teeth and in his throat, where it made his saliva pool in his mouth. It also caused a small rush of sensation through his body, an excited blast along his nerves, like a strong wind in his blood. It wasn’t very calming. In fact, it didn’t calm him at all. Still, he didn’t think about Peter or about the cot in his cell or the way come felt coming back up his throat or anything but the electric current running to the ends of his fingertips for that brief moment. 

Then it was gone and everything slipped away in the desire to have that feeling back. Neal leaned over the table, over the little pile he’d tapped out, and snorted it. That rush washed through him like cold water through his hair and he stood there with his head tilted back and just breathed slow and deep. It tingled, his skin felt tight, his head felt like the top of his skull was going to come off, like his brain was going to explode and go shooting through the sky like a rocket. The high, the rush, only lasted for a few minutes though and when it was gone he immediately wanted it back again. Coming down from it was painful, nauseating business, but that could be cured by another hit. 

Neal finished what was on the table and the high lasted a little longer, but it wasn’t really working. He was jittery and anxious and carried the unequivocal conviction that he was being watched and followed, even though he was alone in his own apartment, which Mozzie checked weekly for bugs and other surveillance devices. His heart was racing so fast and heavy that Neal put his hand over it and was sure he was having pains, even though it didn’t hurt, which was a strange, mirage-like feeling. Somewhere, it must be hurting, but he didn’t feel the hurt, just knew, _knew_ that it was there. He swallowed and felt the vibration of his own laughter. It made him choke. 

His phone was on the counter and Neal snatched it up. His elbow knocked a bottle of syrah to the floor and Neal jumped at the sound of the glass shattering. Then he stood there and stared at the wine, splattered and puddled like blood. It leaked over the floor toward his feet and he kept staring, and it was slow moving, like an octopus. He got down on his knees on the floor and peered into the puddle, but there were no eyes looking back at him and his own face shimmered in the black fluid. His face was the skeleton face with the eyes made of stars that he saw when he looked into the glass of the French doors every night. For the first time he began to entertain the idea that it wasn’t his face at all. It was thinner, cheekbones like the cheeks of a skull, the eyes empty like they had been removed with a melon baller, staring at him with amusement, with cruel knowledge, mocking him. 

Neal shoved himself away from the puddle and the broken bottle. He cut his hand on the broken glass, but didn’t feel it until he saw the blood running down his wrist. Panicking, Neal gripped his phone in both hands and scrolled through his numbers, looking for someone. Someone to help him. Someone he could trust. Someone who would tell him it was okay and get rid of the black puddle on the floor. Someone who would cover all the windows.

Peter. 

Neal stared at his name and phone number for a minute and he wanted to hit SEND because Peter was who he wanted. Peter was who he _needed_. But Peter wouldn’t help. He would try. Might try. If he didn’t just get pissed off and do something to punish him for it because he had asked about drugs and Neal had been so insistent about his nos and even though he hadn’t been lying, that was right where Peter’s mind always went and he would think it. He would think Neal had--

No. No Peter. Who? Who to call? Oh, God, his skin was tingling. Not in a good way. Not at all. His head hurt and he felt like he was going to throw up again. Again? An image of his face on the shining metal surface of a toilet tank flashed in his mind. Neal made a low keening sound in his throat. 

Mozzie. Mozzie was number two on his speed dial. He didn’t always trust Mozzie because Mozzie was like him. Mozzie couldn’t always be trusted and no one knew that better than Neal, but Mozzie… he was Mozzie. He could trust Mozzie with this. Mozzie would take care of it. Mozzie might believe Neal had been anally probed by aliens and that was why he was being so… being so… _weird_ , but he wouldn’t laugh about it because aliens were serious business. Peter was number one, but Peter couldn’t be trusted because Peter was so goddamn _noble_. Mozzie was number two and then Peter again on the home phone, then it was Diana, which was out of the question. Out. Of. The. Question. 

Neal hit SEND and held the phone to his ear in his shaking hand. “Mozzie. Mozzie. Moz, Moz, Mozzie,” he muttered as he waited for him to answer. 

“Hey, Neal,” Mozzie said when he finally answered the phone. “I’m kind of busy. You know, I’ve got an idea about the music box--”

“Mozzie,” Neal said, cutting him off. He didn’t care about the music box right now. He didn’t even care about Kate or Fowler or anything else Mozzie might be up to. “Mozzie, I did something. Something _bad_. God, so, so bad. Peter’s gonna kill me. Almost called him first. I wanted him first. _Want_ him. Can’t though. I can’t. Can’t let him know. He’d never shut up about it. I’d never hear the end of it. Never, never, never. Even in prison, he’d probably send me letters about it or those obnoxious singing cards or... He’d always be--Mozzie?”

“What did you do?” Mozzie asked tentatively. “By bad, are we talking illegal?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Neal said. He laughed, caught himself and made himself stop. “Peter was asking me if I was on drugs the other day, remember I told you? And I wasn’t, but I am. Because… it was such a bad idea it almost had to be the answer. So I… Oh, God. My head hurts. I think I’m going to throw up.”

“What did you do, Neal?”

“Crank,” Neal said. He almost sounded cheerful about it. “I wanted coke, but the guy said… the guy said he was all out. This was better. Except this is… it’s…” He shuddered. “It’s not better. It’s something. It’s, it’s… in my teeth. Kind of like… aluminum on fillings. Except it doesn’t hurt, it’s just… just… Ah, God. Mozzie? Where are you?”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Mozzie said. He sounded like he was running. “Neal?”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t do any more.”

“But maybe more would make it better.”

“Neal. No. Don’t do any more. I’ll be right there.”

“But, Mozzie, it’s--”

But Mozzie had hung up on him. Neal stared at his phone, huffed out a breath and went to go find something to take his mind off the throbbing in his temples and the still mostly full baggie of crank on his dining table.

~~*~~

By the time Mozzie arrived at Neal’s place, Neal had calmed himself down, which was good. Unfortunately, he had calmed himself down because he had become distracted by the little hole he was digging in his arm with a small, pointed pallet knife. When Mozzie took it away from him, Neal screamed at him that it was a claymore and if he didn’t give it back to him _right now_ , he was going to kill him. Alarmed, Mozzie left him alone and went to clean up the wine on the floor. Neal followed him, apologizing and still digging at the bleeding hole in his arm, now with his fingers. 

“Damn, I wanted to try that syrah,” Mozzie said, kneeling on the floor with a chunk of the bottle and a scrap of the label in his hand. He sighed and tossed it in the trash with the rest. Neal was hovering around him and Mozzie was deliberately not acting as annoyed about it as he really was. “Neal, why did you go out and buy… _crank_? Do you have any idea what that can do to your--”

“I _had_ to, Mozzie. Had to do something,” Neal said, half muttering it as he paced. “I didn’t… I don’t… I had to do something. Have to, I mean. Because it’s _not working_.” He suddenly turned to Mozzie, smiling. “Moz, we should go out.”

“Ah… Neal, I think we should stay here,” Mozzie said. He put the trash can aside and stood up. “Besides, there’s nowhere fun to go out _to_ inside your radius.”

Neal curled his lip at that and stalked over to the couch, where he sat down and glared at the blank TV. To Mozzie’s horror, Neal put his face in his hands and drew in a deep breath like he was about to cry. Neal _felt_ like he was going to cry, tears even burned in a threatening way in the corners of his eyes, but he breathed and the urge receded as suddenly as it had surfaced. Instead, Neal laughed. 

Mozzie went to find the first aid kit. When he came back, he sat on the couch with Neal and took his arm to look at the wound he had dug. “Why did you do this?” he asked. 

Neal shrugged, staring over his head at one of his sketch pads propped up in a chair. The drawing was a study in charcoal of a nude woman sitting with one leg folded beneath herself in a window seat. Neal drew a lot of nude women and never drew nude men, not when it was just for himself in his free time. He never really thought about it much. The woman in the window seat looked a little bit like Kate. Neal realized it as he stared at the picture. It had Kate’s dark hair and her enormous eyes. 

“I hate that picture,” Neal said. He tried to point at it, but Mozzie was bandaging his arm and held it down. “We should burn it.”

“Sure, Neal,” Mozzie said. “Hold still. I’m almost done.”

He taped the bandage off and swatted Neal’s hand away when he instantly started picking at it. “Stop it. You’re going to have sores all over and then you won’t even have to _call_ the suit and inform him of your illicit drug use. He’ll figure it out on his own.”

“ _Don’t hit me_ ,” Neal said, almost yelling it. He huffed out a breath, looked around and, in a much calmer voice, asked, “You really think he’ll know? I don’t want him to know. I don’t. You know what he’s like. You know what he’ll say?”

Mozzie rolled his eyes and got up to put the gauze and paper tape away. “Maybe he’ll just assume you’ve got some sort of pox.”

Neal sat there grinding his teeth and staring at the drawing in the chair, but he shook his head. “He’ll ask about it and, no matter what I say, he’ll think I’m lying. He thinks I’m always lying, even when I’m not. You know why?”

Mozzie shook his head, though Neal wasn’t looking at him and didn’t see it. He paused by the dining table and looked at the packet of powder that was making Neal so crazy. “No, why?”

“Peter says--he actually said this--it saves time,” Neal said. He huffed out a soft laugh, then scrubbed at his face. 

Mozzie pocketed the baggie and returned to where Neal was. Instead of sitting with him on the sofa, he took a chair. “So he just assumes everything you say is a lie so he doesn’t have to think about it?” Mozzie said. “He’s probably lying.”

Neal laughed again. “I know. You know what else he said? Last week. After I… I… He said, ‘I can do whatever I want with you.’ And he’s right, you know. The power in this whole… relationship--friendship--whatever it is, it’s all… all over the place, but mostly it’s in his court. That’s a sports reference, he’d like that. But it is. I _hate it_. But more than I hate it, I hate _him_ when he says that shit to me. And I hate that he makes me hate him. He does it on purpose, I swear to God.”

“Probably,” Mozzie agreed. “It’s the kind of thing a person does when they’re trying to push another person away. You know that. It’s classic psychology, Neal.”

Neal sat forward with his arms braced on his knees. His hands were shaking and his fingers were jittery, but his eyes were bright and intent. “But _why_? Why? Sometimes… most of the time… there’s… it makes no sense. I’m not… I’m just… doing my job, usually. And sometimes he even looks like he’s sorry when he says something that really just… really shitty. But he never says it. Of course not. Because I’m me and he’s him and that makes him always right in the end. And I love him, but sometimes I want to punch him in his self-righteous face.”

Mozzie’s eyes widened. “Hold on. Come again?”

“Sometimes I want to punch him in his self-righteous face,” Neal repeated. “It’s not very nice and I’m not a violent guy, but--” 

“No, before that,” Mozzie said. When Neal just looked at him in confusion and bounced his wrists on his knees, Mozzie sighed. “You said you _love_ him. You mean, like in the way of friends, right? Because--”

“Yes, of course,” Neal said. He frowned. “No. I don’t know.”

Mozzie stared at him and his eyes became huge behind his glasses. “Are you _kidding_?” he said, fairly shouting it at him. “How did I not know about this? How did I not know that this… Oh, God. Neal, this is so bad. No wonder he gets so… I mean, he has a _wife_. Mrs. Suit’s going to castrate you when she finds out.”

Neal threw himself back on the couch and scowled at the ceiling. “She probably already knows,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. I haven’t… you know. Or anything. I wouldn’t. Weren’t you listening when I said the power dynamic of the whole relationship is completely off? Which makes it impossible.”

“No it doesn’t. It makes it completely volatile,” Mozzie said. He thought about it and whatever he was thinking, he didn’t seem happy about it. “How long?”

Neal sat back up. “How long is what?”

“How long have you had…” Mozzie swallowed like he had something vile in his throat, “amorous feelings for the suit?”

Neal got up and paced. “I don’t know.”

“Of course you _know_ ,” Mozzie said, arms flailing. “That’s not the kind of thing you don’t _know_.”

“Remember when I sent champagne to the surveillance van?” Neal said, casting him a wary glance. “About then.”

“That was _seven_ … no, _eight years ago_ ,” Mozzie said. “You had met him a grand total of _once_ , Neal, and he didn’t even know who you were. You can’t be serious. You’re not that… that _irrational_.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Neal said. He sat back down and started scratching a spot high up on his cheek with his right hand. “It wouldn’t matter anyway. I can’t. I _wouldn’t_. And he definitely wouldn’t for about fifty different reasons.”

“Number one being he’d lose his wife and probably his job,” Mozzie said. “Neal, don’t pick at your face. You can’t hide that under a shirt.”

Neal dropped his hand into his lap and stared at his fingers like he wasn’t sure where they had come from. “Yes, but he’s not… He’s got this paternal thing for me. Which is disappointing and sometimes annoying.”

“I’m sure,” Mozzie said. He didn’t sound displeased by it though. “What are you going to do?”

Neal lifted his eyebrows. “About Peter? Nothing.”

Mozzie frowned at him, searching his face for any tell of a lie. When he found nothing, he said, “That must kill you.”

Neal was used to getting what he wanted and not all that used to waiting or giving up, so yeah, it did. “All the time,” he said. He jumped up again and went over to the dining table. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he called back to Mozzie, “Did you see a little plastic Ziploc bag over here?”

“No,” Mozzie lied. He got up and went over to the cupboard against the wall to find a bottle of something stronger than wine. Neal needed something to bring him down a hell of a lot more than he needed another hit of meth. “Don’t you have a bottle of scotch around here somewhere?”

“Johnny Walker blue, over there,” Neal said, waving his hand in the general direction of the cupboard Mozzie was already looking in. “You took the drugs, didn’t you, Moz?”

“Neal, you don’t need to take any more of that. You’re going to get sick and imagine what you’ll be like at work on Monday,” Mozzie said. He had found the Johnny Walker and poured Neal some in a highball glass.

“You don’t care about--” Neal started, but Mozzie put the glass in front of him and Neal had to either take it or get it all over his shirt. “This is not what I need,” he muttered around the rim of the glass as he drank it. 

Mozzie refilled the glass when it was empty. “Yeah, actually I think it’s exactly what you need,” he said. “Here, drink up.”

Neal picked up the glass and drained it. He was already starting to calm down and just in time, too. Downstairs, the door opened and closed. June was home.

~~*~~

On Monday, Neal felt like utter shit, but only part of that was the residual influence of coming down from methamphetamine. The rest of it was because he remembered perfectly everything he had confessed to Mozzie. He had kept it to himself for a long time, for years, and he couldn’t even blame the drugs on it now because it hadn’t been the drugs. It had been the stress. Of course, the drugs had happened in the first place because of the stress too, so maybe he could blame it a little on the drugs. 

His skin crawled whenever Peter looked at him and let his gaze linger. There was a time when Neal had been used to that. He hadn’t thought much of it. Maybe thought that one day it might come in handy, the way Peter wanted him. Now it made him itch and Neal wished like hell he could go back to the time when it hadn’t felt that way. Back to when he had almost _enjoyed_ it. Now, though he knew better, he was sure Peter must know everything he had told Mozzie. The words had been said, they were out there in the world and not just in his head anymore. It made everything different. He surely had to know. 

Later in the day, Neal was standing in the conference room with Peter, looking down at a file spread out across the table. He reached for a photograph, but paused when Peter cleared his throat. 

“So, are you going to tell me what happened to your hand?” he asked. 

Neal closed his hand without picking up the photograph and stood back up. “I broke a bottle of wine Friday night. Cut my hand while I was cleaning it up.”

Peter considered this, then nodded and leaned over the table to gather up the papers and put them all back in the file. “Why don’t you go on home. We can start again with fresh eyes in the morning,” he said. “You look tired.”

A small smile tugged at his mouth and Neal said, “Thanks, Peter.”

“You know what I mean,” Peter said, flustered. “I didn’t mean that--”

Neal held up a hand and shook his head. He was already sorry that he had said anything. “I know what you mean,” he said, “And, yeah, I am. I’ll just go home then. Have a good night. Say hello to Elizabeth for me.”

“Hold on. I’ll walk out with you,” Peter said, going into his office to get his jacket.

Neal didn’t wait for him, expecting Peter would catch up with him while he was waiting for the elevator. But the elevator arrived just as he reached it and Neal got on. Peter was through the glass door and almost there when the elevator door closed and Neal didn’t hit the button to stop it. He wasn’t mad at Peter, he wasn’t upset, he just didn’t really want to be closed into an elevator with him at the moment. He wanted to be alone and he wanted to go home and maybe he wanted to stop at a liquor store before he caught a cab and get himself another bottle of whiskey because the Johnny Walker really had done the trick. He wanted to do all of those things without Peter’s eyes crawling all over him, looking for something; some lie he hadn’t told or some game he wasn’t playing or some scam he hadn’t pulled yet. Or worse, looking because he couldn’t help himself. Looking just for the sake of looking at him. Like Neal was some forbidden thing being danced in front of him just to tempt him. He hated that look the most because Peter would never be tempted. In that scenario, Peter was the saint and Neal would always be the devil.

Neal had left the federal building and was walking, eyes downcast, not paying much attention to the people around him walking by, when someone said his name. It wasn’t Peter, but he recognized the voice and it froze him in place. Cautiously, he lifted his head and felt like an insect on a pin when his eyes locked with the familiar green ones of a man who was about two inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than himself. 

His name was Curt Harlow and Neal knew him from the first time he had been put in prison. The first time; the longest time. Curt had liked Neal and hadn’t really cared that Neal hadn’t liked him back quite as much. He hadn’t been the first man to force him, but he had been one of the more persistent and aggressive. 

“Excuse me,” Neal said, desperately hoping he would just let it be; let him go. 

Curt stood in front of him and a slow, sinister grin spread across his face as he looked at Neal. He was handsome and arrogant with it. In prison, he had been an object of desire himself, but unlike Neal, he knew how to fight them off and he was big enough to cause some hesitation. Still, handsome or not, that grin was ugly and it made Neal’s blood run cold. 

“That’s all you’ve got to say to me?” Curt asked, voice pitched low. “’Excuse me’ like I’m some guy you’ve never met before? Like I’m just some guy you can brush off? Some guy who’s never touched you. Some guy, like every other faceless guy, who’s never fu--”

“Excuse me, can I help you?” Peter asked. 

He had come around the corner as Neal was backing away from Curt and Curt was advancing on him like a stalking animal. Neal backed right into him, felt his back hit solid flesh and almost screamed. As it was, he still made a pathetic, frightened sound and choked as he stumbled away from Peter and backed up until his back was against the wall of a building. 

Peter didn’t seem to even notice Neal, though Neal knew better. He saw the muscle in Peter’s jaw jump, and the cold anger in his eyes as he looked at Curt was frightening enough that Neal took a moment to be glad that look was not directed at him. 

Curt wasn’t as impressed by it as Neal was. He stood over Peter and glared at him. His attempt at intimidation didn’t impress Peter much either. They stood there glaring death at each other long enough that Neal took his eyes off of them and looked around for an escape route while Peter was distracting him. It was cowardly to run, cowardly to abandon Peter that way; he knew that and still all he wanted to do was get away. His fight or flight instinct had kicked in the moment Curt said his name and Neal wasn’t much of a fighter.

“Who the fuck are you?” Curt demanded, finally breaking the silence. 

Peter flashed him his ID. “Special Agent Peter Burke, that’s who the fuck I am,” he said. “Who are you?”

Curt held up his hands, his entire demeanor changing instantly. “Whoa. Hey, man, there’s no problem here,” he said. “I was just saying hello to an old friend. Isn’t that right, Neal?”

Neal gave Peter a helpless look and shook his head. “Sure,” he said. Anything to make him go away. “Yeah. Ah… hey, Curt. It’s… nice to see you.”

Peter didn’t look directly at him, but his eyebrows inched up as Neal spoke. He clearly wasn’t buying it. “Get out of here,” he told Curt. “Now, before I think of a reason to arrest you just for pissing me off.”

“Loitering,” Neal offered. 

Peter’s lips twitched, but he didn’t smile. “Now,” he snapped.

“Okay, okay. I’m going,” Curt said. 

Peter stood there and watched Curt cross the street and hurry away before he turned to Neal. He looked at him standing there, still with his back up against the wall, his hands shoved deep into his pockets so he wouldn’t fidget with them, his shoulders hunched and his eyes big and afraid, and he knew. His expression softened and he approached Neal like he thought he might bolt. 

Neal just watched him draw closer and hated the knowledge he saw in Peter’s eyes now. The _pity_. He expected disgust, but there wasn’t any. Maybe he was hiding it from him or maybe Peter really didn’t know. Maybe he still thought the worst thing Neal had been through behind bars was an occasional beating. He hoped to God that was what Peter still thought. He hoped so, but he didn’t count on it. Peter wasn’t even remotely stupid and the only reason he hadn’t figured it out before now was because he was too close. 

“Come on,” Peter said, laying a hand on Neal’s side to guide him away from the wall. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

Neal looked down at Peter’s hand on his waist and nodded. “Alright,” he said. “Alright, but can we just not talk about this right now? I know you’ll want to, but I just--I don’t.”

Peter nodded and his hand went to the small of Neal’s back as Neal turned to walk with him back to his car. “We don’t have to talk about it now,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later. If you want to.”

“I want a drink,” Neal said. 

“Alright. You want to stop for a drink somewhere?” Peter asked. 

“I want to stop for a bottle somewhere,” Neal said. “Peter?”

“Yeah, Neal?”

“Thanks.”

“Any time.”

“I mean it. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Peter?”

“Yeah?”

“It was pretty sexy. Flashing your badge like that, getting all--”

“Okay, Neal. That’s enough.”

Neal laughed and felt himself relax as he walked with Peter to his car. Peter was as good as his word, too. He didn’t say a thing about it as he drove Neal home. He didn’t ask any questions. He stopped at a liquor store, waited while Neal went inside and bought a bottle of whiskey and he still didn’t saying anything. He turned the radio on and they listened to a baseball game on the ride over to June’s house and Neal wanted to thank him for it, and maybe for being so decent about it, all over again when he got out of the car, but he didn’t.

~~*~~

On Sunday, Neal returned home around noon from the White Bored exhibit with pad thai takeout. He had enjoyed himself and the chance to get out when neither tethered to Peter or evading the law. Agent Bancroft was a interesting guy, too. He was kind to Neal. Neal appreciated that and the fact that he didn’t listen to baseball games in the car. He seemed to genuinely like him and Neal thought he would definitely be a valuable friend to have. 

He hadn’t enjoyed the outing as much as he expected though. He was still a little shaken up about the case they had just closed. It felt good to nab a U.S. marshal like John Deckard. It was wonderfully ironic. Deckard was also just a complete asshole and watching him get arrested and hauled off was one of the more satisfying things Neal had done in days. That wasn’t what bothered him about it. He couldn’t stop thinking about Jack Franklin and his knock-out CI girlfriend. Franklin had almost lost his job over it and his credibility was shattered. The CI, Rebecca, was doing alright for herself and Franklin had turned to her in his time of need, but they weren’t together. She had lost him. 

He didn’t like that Rebecca and Franklin made him think of himself and Peter, but they did. It hit a little too close to home. Their situations weren’t even remotely the same, but the attraction, the potential that was always hanging there, though never to be consummated, was something that had been nagging at him more than usual lately. 

It was Mozzie’s fault. Mozzie’s and a few hits too many of a drug Neal had no business putting up his nose. And, while he was placing blame, maybe a little bit Curt Harlow’s fault, too. 

And now Sara Ellis was sniffing around his ankles and Neal wondered if being her new love interest was better or worse than being in the crosshairs of her gun. Although it was interesting how Peter didn’t seem to mind. Neal had seen him jealous and annoyed by women who took an interest in him more times than he could count, but he seemed almost pleased about it this time. 

Neal supposed it served him right for being nice to her in the first place. He didn’t like it when people didn’t like him, which was probably a major weakness he might want to look into. 

Still, all in all, it had been a pretty good night. A _productive_ night. He had John Deckard’s key to his anklet, if nothing else. Even if he didn’t use it, he knew it was there. Knowing he had the key and it was there whenever he wanted to use it was almost the same as being free, even when he was still wearing the damn thing. He could think about the key now whenever Peter felt the need to remind him of his radius and it wouldn’t irritate him so much. Besides, there was no way he wasn’t going to use it.

And Franklin had really screwed up Peter’s date night with Elizabeth. It was petty, but Neal took a tiny, ugly bit of pleasure from the idea. He didn’t dislike Peter’s wife, not at all, but Peter wasn’t the only one of them allowed to indulge in a little bit of jealousy now and then. 

Love might be the impetus of a thousand sonnets, a million pop songs, and an infinite number of sappy Julia Roberts movies, but being in love never felt good. He would take his pleasures, small as they were, where he could get them because he couldn’t have what he truly wanted. Some people thought Neal was a romantic. Why else would he break out of prison three months shy of completing his four year sentence because of a girl? No one really considered that he could have broken out at any time during that four year period, yet hadn’t. He had stayed. They didn’t wonder about why, about the thing that had kept him there, despite the fact that Kate was outside waiting for him. That was really the bigger question, but no one ever asked it. Not even Peter thought to ask that one. Neal _was_ a romantic though. He was a romantic if it was art or poetry or literature or even sex you were talking about, but when it came to love--to romance--he was a realist, sometimes even a cynic. He had only been in love twice in his life and both times it felt like someone had punched a gaping hole through his gut so that it was all he could do not to scream.

Neal nearly hit June with the door on his way into the house. She was on her way out and looked surprised to see him. 

“I thought you were upstairs,” she said. She frowned. “Isn’t it Sunday?”

Neal smiled tiredly and shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah. There was this case,” he said. “I haven’t been to bed yet.”

June tsked. “And not eating well either, I see,” she said, indicating the takeout bag in his hand. “Neal, darling, you should take better care of yourself.” She smiled at him and patted his cheek, then breezed by him out the door. “I’m off. Get some rest and tell that FBI agent of yours he can do without if he calls today. It’s Sunday. It’s a day _for_ rest and who is that young man to argue with God?”

Neal had no idea, but he was sure that if something came up and he was presented with the dilemma _by_ God, Peter would still argue until God gave up and let him just wake Neal. As he climbed the stairs, Neal decided to turn off his phone.

Mozzie was sleeping on the couch when Neal walked in. There was a mostly empty bottle of white wine on the coffee table and a full glass that Mozzie hadn’t finished before falling asleep. Neal carried the bottle back into the kitchen and drank what was in the glass himself while he opened food cartons and broke apart the cheap restaurant chopsticks. 

It was a nice day, warm outside but not too humid, and Neal took his food out on the terrace to watch the city while he ate. His phone was sitting on the table and it rang. He hadn’t turned it off yet because he honestly had not imagined that anyone would call him. 

He considered not answering it, but leaned over to look at the screen and saw that it was Peter. With a sigh, Neal put his food down and picked up his wine glass in one hand and the phone with the other. “Good morning, Peter,” he said. 

“It’s almost one o’clock,” Peter said. 

“Yes, well, I’m a bit disoriented I guess, seeing as I haven’t slept yet,” Neal said. It wasn’t entirely untrue, but he hadn’t been sleeping lately as a rule anyway so it hardly mattered. He was just giving Peter a hard time. 

Peter seemed to know it too. “You didn’t have to go to the--what was it?--White Bored exhibit. But your curiosity won out over the necessity of sleep. How am I not surprised.”

Neal grinned and drank his wine. “You’re not sleeping either,” he said. “What’s your excuse?”

“I don’t need an excuse,” Peter said. “I have a wife who has every right to be angry with me after last night, but miraculously is not, so I feel obliged to make it up to her.”

“And yet, here you are talking to me,” Neal said. 

Peter didn’t say anything for a minute, then seemed to ignore the point Neal had just made and asked, “What are you doing if you’re not sleeping?”

“I’m outside on the terrace enjoying the amazing view I’m not supposed to have according to you, while I eat takeout and drink what Mozzie left me of my last bottle of Pinot Blanc,” Neal said. He could still feel himself smiling and when Peter snorted laughter in his ear the smile only widened. Neal felt warm, comfortable and relaxed, and couldn’t attribute it entirely to the wine, the sun and the food. “What are you doing if you’re not in bed making up your spoiled date night to Elizabeth?” 

“How do you know I’m not?” Peter asked. “I can multitask.”

Neal laughed. “I never would have taken you for kinky and adventurous, Agent Burke,” he said.

Peter laughed too and Neal listened to it with his head tipped back on the back of his chair, the sun on his face turning his closed eyelids red, and he suddenly felt like he could sleep. Just to keep Peter talking, Neal asked. “So, why are you calling? I just saw you. You’re not taking my weekends completely away from me now, are you?”

“No,” Peter said. The laughter was gone from his voice and he hesitated. Neal was sorry for that; he liked Peter best when he could get him to relax and laugh. “No, I’m just calling because… I guess I wanted to apologize?”

Neal lifted an eyebrow without opening his eyes and smiled again. “For what?”

“For, you know, assuming… accusing you of using drugs or…” Peter cleared his throat. “I didn’t think and I’m an idiot because I should have known. They teach us the signs to look for and I know all the signs. They were all over you and I should have realized… but I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t want to see it.”

Neal’s smile fell away and his heart lurched in alarm before he took a breath and told himself to be calm. It didn’t work that well, but his voice didn’t betray him when he said, “It’s not your fault, Peter. You were too close, you couldn’t see it. It’s like those pictures in newspapers. Like a Seurat painting. If you’re too close, it’s just a bunch of colored dots.”

“It is my fault,” Peter said. “A lot of it is, anyway.”

“Because you arrested me?” Neal said. His voice had lowered, become almost mumbling, like a toy winding down. “It wasn’t that first time that really… I was okay for a while. For a long time, actually. I’m not really that easy to break, Peter.”

“No,” Peter said. “I know you’re not.”

Neal smiled again and almost thanked him for that. Instead, he said, “I’m also a man. Those same signs you’re talking about? Men don’t recognize them in other men a lot of the time. So don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“Okay, but that first time…” Peter paused, let out a breath and plunged ahead. “You were in there for four years. I didn’t even think… I never thought about it.”

“Would you have let me go and stopped chasing me if you had thought about it?” Neal asked, genuinely curious. 

“No,” Peter said instantly. “No, I couldn’t do that. But… I might have gotten you out earlier.”

“Always so damn noble, Peter,” Neal said softly. “I should call you Lancelot.”

“Lancelot was screwing the king’s wife,” Peter pointed out. 

“Ah. Galahad then. Sir Galahad, the noblest knight of the round table,” Neal said. “We should get a round table for the conference room, Peter.”

“I’m being serious,” Peter said. Neal could hear him smiling in the tone of his voice though. 

“So am I,” Neal said. 

“I didn’t have to leave you in there for that last three months,” Peter said. 

Neal frowned. He knew what Peter was talking about, of course. After he escaped, after he was sent back to prison, when he asked Peter to have him released into his custody as his CI, Peter had refused. He let Neal finish out his original four year sentence believing that he would be in there for another four, and he had done it because it appealed to his boy scout sense of justice. 

“Yes, you could have,” Neal said. “Though I’m sure there was a lot of red tape and paperwork to get through anyway. Still, you could have. But I told you, Peter, I’m not that fragile. I was still okay then.”

“You mean you weren’t being raped in there for four--”

“Sure,” Neal said. “I mean, come on. Look at me.”

“I do,” Peter said. He sucked in a breath after he said it like it had slipped out and he wanted to take it back. “I mean… uh…”

“I know you do,” Neal said calmly. “So, you see? You get it.”

“I would never--”

Neal cut him off with a laugh. It wasn’t a cruel laugh, it was honestly amused. “Of course you wouldn’t,” he said. “You’re Sir Galahad. Sir Galahad doesn’t rape the pretty damsels. He slays the dragons and woos them with flowers and chase kisses. He also never gets what he really wants.”

“I don’t agree with that, Neal,” Peter said. He sounded irritated. 

“No?” Neal shrugged, though Peter couldn’t see it. “That’s one of the major perks of being one of the bad guys, Peter. You just take what you want.”

“Except that gets you locked up in gaol, doesn’t it?” Peter said. He was using his ‘teaching Neal Caffrey a lesson’ tone of voice, which Neal found to be both amusing and patronizing. “That something for nothing attitude, that _arrogance_ , is what always gets you caught. That and the girls.”

Neal huffed out a breath and rolled his eyes before closing them again. “You can’t slay all the dragons, Peter,” he said. “And I don’t have much use for chaste kissing.”

“I am getting really annoyed with this metaphor,” Peter declared. “I’m sorry, that’s all I wanted to say. It never occurred to me and it should have and I feel like an asshole.”

“Well, you’re not,” Neal said. He finished his glass of wine and sat up to put the glass on the table. “Now, why don’t you go beg Elizabeth’s forgiveness and forget about it? Her forgiveness is much more likely to end in good feelings and orgasms. I, on the other hand, need to go take a nap.”

“Yeah, alright,” Peter said. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

“Mhmm.” Neal ended the call and picked up his pad thai. It had gone cold, but he was hungry so he ate it anyway. 

When he finished, he tossed the food container, brushed his teeth and stripped down to his underwear before crawling into bed. He was still warm from the sun and his mind was still rolling Peter’s laughter and the warm, sometimes intimate tone of his voice around and around like a top. He fell asleep thinking about it and dreamed about knights and dragons and _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_. In the dream, Peter was the knight of course, but Neal wasn’t the damsel, he was the dragon. No matter how much he loved the knight, he couldn’t help the way he kept spitting fire at him. Still, it felt like a love story.

~~*~~

Neal woke up on Tuesday morning when Peter knocked on the door. Peter could still cop-knock with the best of them so Neal started awake and grabbed onto the edge of the mattress while he blinked his eyes into focus to read the numbers on the clock by his bed. 

10:47 AM. Oh, shit. 

He scrambled out of bed and started for the bathroom when the knocking that had awakened him came again. Thinking it was Mozzie forgetting he had a key, Neal went to the door and opened it. Peter stood there holding a paper grocery bag with his hand raised to knock again. When he saw Neal standing there, naked except for his underwear, his eyebrows shot up and he paid careful attention to maintaining eye contact. 

Neal rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands and shook his head. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “And why didn’t anyone call me? It’s almost eleven.”

“Yeah, it’s also Tuesday,” Peter said. 

Neal blinked at him in surprise. “No, it isn’t. It’s Monday. I talked to you on the phone yesterday at about one. Then I went to bed. It can’t be Tuesday.”

“Well, it is,” Peter said. He crowded Neal back from the door so he could enter the apartment and went to put the grocery bag down on the counter. “Put some pants on and don’t worry about it. I’m making breakfast.”

Neal stood in the middle of the apartment and just stared stupidly at Peter. “I couldn’t have slept that… Why didn’t Mozzie wake me up?”

“I asked him the same thing when I called you yesterday and he answered your phone,” Peter said. “He had some really interesting things to say about your sleeping habits lately.”

Neal groaned and put his face in his hands. 

“Namely, that you don’t,” Peter said. He took a carton of eggs, an onion, a green bell pepper, a block of cheddar cheese and a package of bacon out of the grocery bag and set them all on the counter. There was also a carton of milk, a container butter and a loaf of bread. He put the milk and butter in the refrigerator. “Do you want toast?”

Neal took his hands away from his face and stared at him. “What?” Peter was making breakfast, he reminded himself. “No, Peter. You’re not making--Wait, can you cook? Other than pot-roast?”

“Kinda hard to fuck up an omelet and toast,” Peter said. He decided to ignore Neal’s protest about toast and left the bread out while he went in search of a pan and the toaster. “Neal, I really wish you would at least put pants on. Even if you’re not going to shower and get dressed, just… alright? Pants.”

Neal cocked his head and looked down at Peter, who was crouched on the floor to look into the bottom cupboards. “Why? Does it bother you?”

“Yeah, actually,” Peter said, not looking up at him. He had found a pan that would work for omelets and the toaster. “It’s distracting as hell.”

Neal smirked and went by him to go get dressed. “Wouldn’t want that. You might fuck up the omelet after all.”

Neal took a shower and, because he didn’t really think Peter was about to let him laze around all day in nothing but his pants and not make him go to work, he got dressed. He was wearing a black suit, blue tie and dark grey fedora when he returned to find Peter setting the table for the two of them. Peter looked around when he entered and stared for a beat too long before gesturing to the table. 

“Sit. Eat,” he said. “We’ll talk.”

Neal took his hat off and put it on the table. He sat down and picked up his fork. “Looks good,” he said. He cut off a piece of cheesy omelet, ate it and made an appreciative sound in his throat that made Peter tense. Amused, Neal picked up a triangle of toast as Peter sat down across from him. “What if I don’t want to talk?”

“Why not?” Peter said. He picked up his fork and began to eat. “We talk all the time.”

“Yes, but for some reason you make it sound ominous,” Neal said. 

“Well, you did sleep for two days,” Peter said. “I’d be a moron if I wasn’t concerned.”

“You _let_ me sleep for two days,” Neal said. “Why?”

Peter got up to get them both coffee. “From what Mozzie said on the phone, I think you needed it,” he said. He brought the coffee back to the table and sat back down. “What’s going on with you?”

Neal picked up his coffee and drank it without meeting his eyes. Cream, no sugar, just as he liked it. He wasn’t surprised that Peter knew. “I’m fine.”

Peter scoffed. “You’re fine,” he said. “I don’t know who you’re trying to convince more, me or yourself. I’m serious, Caffrey. What’s going on?”

“Caffrey now, is it?” Neal said. A little smile tugged at his lips. “Am I in trouble, Agent Burke?”

“If you keep deflecting like that to avoid the question,” Peter said. 

“It’s personal, Peter,” Neal said. 

“No,” Peter said. 

Neal put his fork down and stared at him across the table. “What do you mean, no? I’m not allowed personal problems?”

“It’s not personal when it’s…” Peter sighed and tried a different approach. “A lot of people are counting on you. I _need_ you. You with your head on straight. You can’t go to pieces on me now.”

“I’m not,” Neal said.

“You are,” Peter said. 

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re really not.”

“I’m handling it.”

“Neal--”

“I can’t _help it_!” Neal shouted. He took a couple of calming breaths, then laughed in a humorless way and sat back. “You’re not going to leave it alone, are you?”

“You can talk to me,” Peter said softly. “I’ll listen.”

Neal shook his head and looked over Peter’s head through the glass doors. “There’s always a trap somewhere with you, Peter.”

“You don’t trust me,” Peter said. He actually sounded hurt. 

“See, that’s the trouble with me,” Neal said. “I _do_. This… it’s not about trust.”

“What is it about?” Peter asked. 

Neal smiled faintly, aware that Peter was still subtly pushing for him to talk about it. “Humiliation,” he said. “It’s about humiliation. There are just some things… I couldn’t stand it. You already know what happened. If I talk about it, if you can imagine it… I couldn’t stand it if you looked at me like that.”

“Neal,” Peter said. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’re a victim.”

Neal rolled his eyes and let his head drop back on his shoulders with an exhaled laugh. “Right,” he said. “That’s so trite, Peter. So… very _wrong_. You know who really believes there’s no shame in being victimized? Hmm?” When Peter didn’t say anything, Neal leaned on his elbows and stared at him over the table. “People who have never been victims. You’re reduced to an object. Meaningless except for what you can do for someone else. What they can get out of you. You’re dehumanized and reduced to the status of a sex toy or a punching bag or something else that only exists for the pleasure and satisfaction of someone else. _How_ is that not shameful?”

A look of pity crossed Peter’s face, there and gone in a moment, but Neal saw it and inwardly cringed. He pushed his chair back and got up. “Get out,” he said. 

Peter hesitated. “Neal, I think--”

“I mean it, Peter. Please. Just get out.”

Peter nodded and got up from the table. He shifted restlessly in place like he felt he should do or say something else, then just headed for the door. “I’ll be back later. Don’t worry about work right now. Just… I’ll check on you this evening. Maybe we can talk then.”

“Sure, Peter,” Neal said numbly. 

When he heard the door close, Neal went to lock it, then sat back down and finished his breakfast. Peter wasn’t going to leave it alone and he was going to have to give him something. He was like a dog worrying at a bone when it came to some things and Neal had a feeling this was going to be one of those. He wasn’t being a jerk about it, but that didn’t make much difference. His kindness and understanding were still like knives twisting in. The only other thing Neal could do was run, and he wasn’t ready for that yet. He needed the resources he could only get from the FBI to find out what had happened to Kate and why. Even if he wanted to run, he wouldn’t have been able to because of Kate. She had probably played him from the start, but he had loved her anyway and he owed her at least that. 

He was going to have to tell Peter some of it. It wouldn’t make anything better. It wouldn’t make _Neal_ better. Still, if he expected Peter to continue being understanding about how badly Neal was keeping it all together, he would have to tell him some of it. The only question was, which parts? How much of it could he live with? How much could he tell him and still hope to see some form of respect in Peter’s eyes under all the sympathy and pity when he looked at him?

~~*~~

Peter didn’t return that evening to talk. Neal waited anxiously, but he didn’t show and Neal finally gave up waiting and got a little drunk instead. He thought about calling Peter to see what had happened and why he hadn’t shown up, but then he decided, even in his booze-addled state, that that was kind of a clingy girlfriend thing to do. This idea made him laugh and kept him entertained for about an hour, during which he decided to call Peter anyway because drunk-dialing wasn’t restricted to clingy girlfriends and he could absolutely get away with that. Then he decided not to do that either because he remembered he hadn’t wanted to talk to Peter in the first damn place.

Sometime just before daybreak, Mozzie showed up. He took the bottle away from Neal and helped him to bed. He told him a story that was mostly about why the moon landing had never happened and had in actuality been an elaborate hoax. Before he fell asleep, Mozzie had Neal totally convinced that Neal Armstrong had been bouncing across the Mojave Desert instead of the surface of the moon. When Neal woke up the next morning, he didn’t remember any of it, which was probably for the best. 

Thursday night, Neal was standing at the easel in nothing but paint-splattered jeans, trying to recreate a Van Gough painting of irises while Mozzie sat at the table with a laptop. There was a soft knock at the door and Neal put his brushes aside to answer it, expecting June or even Peter, but definitely not expecting to find Elizabeth standing there.

She looked both nervous and determined. Her eyes ran over him and for a moment there was a touch of sadness there, too, but it was quickly put aside. “We need to talk,” she said. “Can I come in?”

“Ah… sure. Of course,” Neal said, standing back for her to enter. While her back was to him, he gave Mozzie a puzzled look. “Is Peter alright?” he asked Elizabeth. He couldn’t imagine another reason for her visit at the moment. “I’ve been… I haven’t seen him in a couple of days. He’s giving me some time.”

“Yes, I know,” Elizabeth said. “He said you needed it.” She sat down on the sofa and waited for Neal to take the chair across from her. “He also said you didn’t want to talk about it.”

Elizabeth didn’t define ‘it’ for him, but from the look on her face, Neal figured she had a pretty good idea of what exactly ‘it’ was. “Okay,” Neal said. He clasped and unclasped his hands in his lap, waiting for her to tell him why she was there. “I didn’t ask, do you want something to drink? There’s wine, but I can make coffee if you’d rather have--”

“No, thank you,” Elizabeth said. She smiled at him and Neal relaxed slightly. “Honey, relax,” Elizabeth told him, seeing it. “You’re not in trouble.”

Neal felt his eyes widen at that and shifted in his chair. “Are you sure?” he said. “Because I feel like I’m in trouble.”

“You’re not in trouble,” Elizabeth repeated. “But, I do think we should talk about you and Peter. There are some things… We should just clear the air a bit.”

Mozzie cleared his throat loudly and abruptly jumped to his feet, the legs of his chair scraping across the floor in his haste. “I just remembered something I have to… ah, do,” he stammered. “Very important. Extremely important. I should go. I’m going… right now.”

“Thank you, Mozzie,” Elizabeth said, not fooled for a minute that he had anything at all to do. “I’ll only be a little while. An hour at the most.”

“It was nice to see you again, Mrs. Suit,” Mozzie said as he fled. 

When he was gone, Neal turned his attention back to Elizabeth, a little worried himself. “Why do I feel like the kid who’s about to be told Mom and Dad are getting a divorce?” he asked. 

Elizabeth smiled a little, but she didn’t laugh the way he expected her to. “We’re not getting a divorce,” she said. “The thing is, before we were ever married or even engaged, Peter and I were… we were _friends_. We’re still friends and have been all along. No one-- _no one_ \--knows him better than I do.”

Neal nodded slowly. He experienced a small--miniscule, really--twinge of envy, but he would never be able to refute what she said. She had been married to him all the years that Peter had been chasing Neal. She had stuck with him through the years of his obsession. She was still with him now that her husband spent most of his days and nights with Neal and had to snatch at scraps of spare time to give to her. Of course she knew him better than anyone. Of course she would be the one person, before anyone else, who would _know_.

“Elizabeth, you don’t have anything to worry about,” Neal said. “I’m not--”

She held up her hand to stop him. “Please don’t insult me by lying, Neal,” she said. “You’re a good liar. We all know what a good liar you are. This really isn’t the time.”

“Okay, now I’m starting to feel like I’m in trouble,” Neal said, wide-eyed. 

Elizabeth smiled and put out a hand to touch his knee briefly. “I’m sorry. That came out sounding a little harsh, didn’t it?” she said. “I’m not really… I’m not good at this, I guess.”

Neal rubbed between his eyes with two fingers, feeling a headache brewing. “Sorry, but what _is_ this exactly?” he asked. “Because if you’re here to warn me away from your husband--which is what it sounds like--then there’s nothing for you to even worry about.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes up and gave him an exasperated look. “Neal, I told you not to lie to me, okay?” she said. “I’m not going to yell at you or… anything. I’m not even mad about it.”

Neal put his hand down and blinked at her. He _wasn’t_ sleeping with Peter, but Elizabeth clearly thought he was, so what she was saying was pretty surprising. “Wait, you’re not mad about it?” he asked. “You? Because I’ve seen you with Peter and you’re pretty in love.”

Elizabeth smiled. “Oh, honey. I’ve seen you with Peter, too, and ditto.”

Neal just stared at her. In his mind, he was flipping through moments when he--when they--might have given themselves away. He wasn’t seeing it, but it was like he had told Peter over the phone; he was too close. All he could see were the colored dots. 

Elizabeth shifted in her seat on the sofa and set down the purse she had been clutching in her lap. “I think I’d like a glass of wine now.”

Neal laughed and got up to get them a bottle. “I’ve got a nice Malbec Mozzie hasn’t drank yet,” he said, holding the bottle up. When Elizabeth nodded, he got them each a glass and brought the wine back to the table. He poured it and sat back down. “Elizabeth, I’m not going to sleep with Peter. Whatever you think, we’re not doing anything like that. We work together, we’re friends, but…” Neal shook his head and sipped his wine. 

“Is it because of what happened to you in prison?” she asked. 

Neal tilted his head curiously to one side and put on a fake smile to cover his embarrassment and annoyance. “He told you about that, huh? Well, maybe that’s part of it.”

Elizabeth frowned at him. “What’s the other part?”

“Oh, there are about million little parts, but the biggest one’s right here,” he said, pointing down to the tracking anklet. 

“Oh,” Elizabeth said. She nodded like she understood and turned her wine glass in her hands. “Not free to love unless free to leave,” she said. It sounded like a quote, though it probably wasn’t. “I guess that makes sense. You’re really not…?”

“Fucking your husband?” Neal supplied. “No.”

“I didn’t believe him when he denied it,” Elizabeth said. 

Neal gaped at her. “You asked _Peter_ this?”

“I might have… accused him of it,” Elizabeth confessed. She huffed out a breath and threw up her hands. “Well, what was I supposed to think? I feel like a voyeur every time I’m stuck in a room with the two of you. If you’re not… you know, well then maybe you _should_. Because all of that, that… that tension and, and…”

“Eye-fucking. We do that a lot,” Neal interjected with a smirk. 

“Yes!” Elizabeth said. “It’s really distracting at dinner parties, Neal.”

Neal threw his head back and laughed. A moment later, Elizabeth seemed to realize what she had said and burst out laughing herself. After a few minutes, once their laughter had subsided, Elizabeth took a drink of her wine and smiled at him again. Some of the tension of the conversation had melted away and they sat smiling back at each other across the coffee table. 

“I met someone,” Elizabeth said abruptly. When Neal didn’t say anything to that, she shrugged her shoulders and looked a little embarrassed. “I wasn’t looking. It wasn’t… I wasn’t trying to get back at him or whatever you might be thinking.”

“That’s not what I was thinking,” Neal assured her. “Do you love him?”

“Peter? Of course I--Oh. You mean… I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe?”

“Then you don’t,” Neal said. “Not yet.”

“No,” Elizabeth agreed. She smiled a soft, secret smile. “He’s very handsome though.”

“I’m sure he is,” Neal said, amused. “Did you tell Peter?”

“I thought you were together,” Elizabeth said, suddenly sounding sad. “You and Peter. It makes sense, you know? So when I confronted him about it and he asked me if I wanted a divorce, I… And I told him. About… His names John.”

“What did Peter say?” Neal asked. He wanted to reach out and comfort her, but Elizabeth looked like she might cry if he did that and he didn’t want to make her cry. She needed to talk about it more than she needed to cry right now. 

“He didn’t say anything,” Elizabeth said. “He didn’t… have to. The look on his face. I was so… so _pissed_ at him. How dare he look like I betrayed him when he’s had you all this time and made me _like_ you? You’ve even had dinner at our house and… I guess it makes more sense now. Oh, God.”

“Hey,” Neal said. He scooted forward in his chair until he was just sitting on the edge of the cushion and finally did reach across the table and take her hands. He took the wine glass from her fingers and set it down on the table. “It’ll be okay. We’ll fix it. You know how much he loves you, right? The man fairly worships at your feet. He’d do anything for you.”

“I know,” Elizabeth said miserably. 

“Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do,” Neal said. “I’m sleeping with Peter.”

She blinked. “What? But you just _said_ \--”

“I know. Let me--”

“And I _believed you_ \--

“ _Elizabeth_ ,” Neal said. He let out an exasperated huff of breath and squeezed her fingers. “I’m not sleeping with Peter, you have my word.”

“I’m sorry. I’m being such a hypocrite about it, aren’t I?” Elizabeth said. “Go ahead.”

“Right. Well, as far as your concerned, I’m sleeping with Peter,” Neal said. He lifted his eyebrows at her and waited for her to protest, but she just nodded. “And now you have John and don’t have to feel guilty about it because Peter’s been screwing around for a while now. How long, by the way?”

“Huh?”

“How long did you think we had been… you know?”

“Oh.” Elizabeth thought about it. “You remember when Peter met with Kate and found out about the music box?”

Neal’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

“I had never seen him so mad,” Elizabeth said. “He came home that night so angry. He…”

“He really hated Kate,” Neal said. 

Elizabeth grinned. “Yes, sweetie, he really did.”

“That long ago though, really?” Neal asked.

“No. But that was probably when I started to think he wanted to,” Elizabeth said. “About five or six months later, you were doing that case with the doctor and the organ donor charity thing, you remember?”

“Hearts Wide Open, yeah,” Neal said. 

“You broke into that clinic and they sedated you and Peter brought you home to me,” Elizabeth said. 

“Uh huh, and you gave me ice for my head. I remember.” Neal picked up his wine and took a drink. “That?”

“Well, Neal, you were so pathetic and Peter looked so worried, even though he was stalking around making all that noise,” Elizabeth said. “Then he told me later what he had done. That he stole the surveillance tape so you wouldn’t go back to prison.”

“But he picked you up from work that night and I thought he was going to make it up to you--that magic hands thing, I mean,” Neal said. “Which… seems like it should have lead to something. Not something involving me, either. I think I’d have noticed.”

“No, no, but after that, we were getting the wiring updated and I went to stay with my sister and Peter was supposed to stay at a hotel, but I guess he ended up staying with you,” Elizabeth said. She gave Neal a meaningful look that Neal just smiled at. “I think it’s only natural that I thought--”

“I kicked him out,” Neal said. 

Elizabeth looked surprised. “You did? He never told me that.”

“Oh, yeah. He accused me of working with our suspect, of not trying hard enough to keep her from getting away--which, by the way, was not my fault as there were three burly men descending on me at the time,” Neal said. “Peter didn’t listen, of course. Then he investigated one of my friends. Ran her prints. I think he was more pissed off about Alex than he was about the girl who got away.”

“He was probably jealous,” Elizabeth said. She picked up her wine glass again and sipped it. “He can be like that.”

“I know,” Neal said. “But he also didn’t trust me. He was spending his time at my place looking into me.”

“Were you trustworthy at the time?” Elizabeth asked. 

Neal smiled. “No, but that’s not the point.”

Elizabeth sat back with her wine glass balanced in one hand and considered him. “You know that’s going to be a problem for the two of you, don’t you?” At Neal’s inquisitive look, she shrugged. “Peter still doesn’t always trust you. You still wish he would. The thing is, I think the only reason you respect him at all is that he doesn’t fall for your tricks. You can’t con him like you do everyone else.”

She was right. It was a little stunning how right she was. Elizabeth had always been able to read Peter pretty easily, but Neal hadn’t actually thought she could do the same with him. He didn’t like it. He was off his game lately and that could be a real problem. He’d have to work on that. 

“You’re right,” he said. “It makes my life a hell of a lot more difficult, but you’re right.”

“I know,” Elizabeth said. “You could have cut that thing on your ankle over a year ago and disappeared the moment you were out. Even Peter knows that. I think the only thing he doesn’t know is why you didn’t.”

“I had to find Kate. The FBI was the best way to do that,” Neal said. “Now I have to find out who killed her.”

“That’s not all of it,” Elizabeth said. “If you could be off the anklet right now, free and clear to go wherever and do whatever you wanted to, where would you go?”

Neal hesitated. “Nowhere,” he admitted. “But it’s the idea. I don’t like being trapped.”

“Well, I don’t think you should blame Peter for it just on principal then,” Elizabeth said. “We got sidetracked. You were going to tell me how to fix my marriage?”

“I don’t blame him,” Neal said. “He’s always saying things, things to rub it in my face, and he’s worse about it now than ever, but I don’t--”

“Neal,” Elizabeth said patiently, “After that plane exploded--even before that--he thought he’d lost you. You spent all that time looking for Kate, obsessing about Kate, putting yourself in danger and being so damn stupid because of Kate. Then you’ve got a clean slate and a plane waiting for you to disappear with Kate and he saw you walking away from him, going to her, ready to disappear forever… Come on. I saw how he was after that plane blew up, while you were in prison, and he was a mess.”

“You’re saying he does it because he’s still thinking about that?” Neal asked. 

“I’m saying that he almost lost you and I don’t think he’s completely recovered from it yet,” Elizabeth said. “It’s not very nice and the tracking anklet doesn’t mean you won’t be gone tomorrow, but it’s something.”

Neal nodded and leaned over to refill her wine glass just for something to do. “Okay,” he said, returning to the topic of her marriage. “Okay, so Peter’s fucking me, right?”

“Alright,” Elizabeth said indulgently. 

“Right. So Peter’s on pretty shaky ground right now when it comes to you fucking this John,” Neal said. 

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose in distaste at his phrasing, but didn’t say anything. 

“So, you won’t fight with him about me and you won’t divorce him and throw him out, as long as he doesn’t track down John and have him arrested for jaywalking or whatever other little things he might come up with,” Neal said. Neal spread his hands. “Huh? You’ve got your boyfriend and he’s got his boyfriend and you still love each other, stay married, live together, and Satchmo doesn’t have to worry about whether he wants to live with Mommy or Daddy. Everything mostly stays the way it is.”

“You’re talking about an open marriage,” Elizabeth said. 

“Semi-open marriage. I don’t think you should start going to swingers parties or anything like that,” Neal said. “Too weird.”

“There’s just one problem with that,” Elizabeth said. “You’re not actually sleeping with my husband. It’s a little one-sided. It might not work.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t believe me,” Neal said. “You think we’re both lying and we _are_ sleeping together.”

“I don’t believe the sleeping part,” Elizabeth said. She sat back up and put her wine glass down on the table. “Alright. It’s a good plan. We basically con my husband into believing that I still think you’re both complete liars, and that’s my bargaining chip to keep John and not end up divorced. I like it.”

Pleased with himself, Neal downed the last of his wine and stood up to walk with her to the door as Elizabeth picked up her purse. “It’s what I do,” he said modestly. “Now, don’t forget when you get home, you’re still mad as hell because we’re both lying bastards.”

Elizabeth paused in the doorway to eye him critically. “I’m a little tipsy, too.”

“That might help,” Neal said. “Just remember, show no fear. Present him with the deal.”

“You’re sure he’ll go for that?” Elizabeth asked. 

Neal smiled and shrugged one shoulder. “Pretty sure.”

Elizabeth laughed a little and reached out to grab his chin. “You’re adorable,” she told him. “You also know this will never work if you’re not actually sleeping with my husband, don’t you?”

Neal pursed his lips. “Probably not,” he agreed. “The plan’s a work in progress. We’ll figure it out.”

“Neal, you don’t have to--”

“Hey, we’ll work on it,” he said. “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to.”

Elizabeth threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. “I’m such a dummy. I really messed it up, didn’t I?” she said. “Thank you.”

Neal hugged her back. “If it makes you feel any better, I would have thought the same thing. You know, if I were you instead of me.”

Elizabeth let him go and leaned back. “It does not make me feel better,” she said sternly. “You are too pretty for your own good. It’s made you arrogant.”

“I don’t think that’s the only thing that did it,” Neal said, unrepentant. 

Elizabeth smiled and walked out. She started down the stairs and called back to him, “You should probably expect a phone call in a little while.”

“Yeah,” Neal said. Peter would be calling him to demand to know just what exactly he had told his wife and to ask him for advice about what to do. Neal couldn’t wait. “Good night, Elizabeth. Good luck.”

Elizabeth had been gone less than five minutes when Mozzie returned. Neal had turned off his phone preemptively and was once again at the easel working. He looked up from where he was painting the single white iris in the middle of a field of purple and watched Mozzie pick up Elizabeth’s unfinished glass of wine and the bottle to read the label. 

“So, what did Mrs. Suit want?”

Neal turned his attention back to his painting. “She thinks I’m fucking her husband,” he said. “I think she came over to give me her blessing.”

Mozzie choked and spit wine on the floor. “Seriously?”

“You’re cleaning that up,” was all Neal said.

~~*~~

Neal went back to work the next day. He was a little better; more rested, his head a little more clear. Peter didn’t say much to him and he had Diana assign him a stack of paperwork that teetered in a chair beside Neal’s desk like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was busy work and felt like it was supposed to be punishment for something, but Neal actually didn’t mind it. He was almost finished with it all when Peter walked out of his office, called his name and did that double finger point thing they apparently taught during first year training at Quantico. Neal looked around the bullpen and realized that everyone else had gone home.

“When did everyone leave?” Neal asked as he stepped into Peter’s office. 

Peter was leaning back in his chair squeezing a hot pink smiley face stress ball in his left hand and didn’t answer. As he assessed Neal, eyes running over him in a way that was more clinical and calculating than Neal was used to or comfortable with, Peter squeezed it particularly hard and its little black eyes bulged between his fingers. 

Neal turned his hat in his hands and resisted the urge to shuffle his feet. “So… I’m gonna go home then.”

“Sit down,” Peter said. 

“Look, Peter, it’s Friday and I had this thing I wanted to--”

“Now.”

Neal sat down in the chair across from him, feeling like a little boy about to be suspended from school, and waited. Peter switched the pink ball to his right hand and crushed it mercilessly in his fist. 

“If you’re doing that to intimidate me, I gotta say, I’m intimidated,” Neal said. “Seriously, it’s scary. I’m impressed. And bonus points for the pink --”

“Shut up, Neal,” Peter said. 

“Ooohhkay,” Neal said. 

“Elizabeth came to see you last night,” Peter said. 

Neal nodded. He had expected this to come up eventually. He had actually expected it to come up a lot sooner. “It told her nothing’s going on--”

“What did she say to you?”

Neal wanted to squirm at the way Peter was staring at him, but he didn’t. It was a testament to the self-control everyone believed he didn’t have that he remained perfectly still. “She told me that she confronted you about it and you denied it and she didn’t believe you,” Neal said. “That she’s seeing someone else and she doesn’t want a divorce. Really, it was all kind of… not my business.”

Peter sat forward, hand gripping the stress ball and mashing it against the edge of his desk. “She thinks I’m fooling around on her with _you_ , Caffrey,” he said. 

“I know,” Neal said. “Ah, Peter, you might want to breathe. Your face is turning really red.”

Peter ignored him. “She thinks we’ve been… that we’ve been _doing it_ for over a year.”

“I know,” Neal said. 

Peter pitched the pink ball at the wall over Neal’s head and sat back with a heavy exhalation of breath. “She’s seeing someone else. Some guy. She won’t tell me anything except his name’s John. _John_.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I want to kill him.”

“Ah, yeah. I’d advise against it,” Neal said. “Prison and all. Which is probably why she won’t tell you anything.”

Peter hung his head and for an alarming moment Neal thought he was going to burst into tears. Instead, he laughed. “Yeah, probably,” he said.

“You’re not really handling this well,” Neal observed. 

“How the hell am I _supposed_ to handle my wife, who I love completely, stepping out on me whenever I’m not around--”

“Which is a lot,” Neal said. 

“Which is a lot,” Peter repeated. He threw out his hands. “With some guy named John. Because--and this is the best part--she thinks I’ve been having an affair with my _male_ CI for more than a year.”

“That’s probably not actually _why_ she’s doing it, you know that right?” Neal said. Peter just glared at him. “It’s probably the thing that makes her feel less guilty about it though.” 

Peter made a sound in his throat that closely resembled a growl and Neal didn’t really know what to make of that. “Look, I’m not Dr. Phil, alright?” he said. “And this--whatever it is--is not my fault.”

“It’s absolutely your fault,” Peter said. “Before you came along, none of this insane crap _ever_ happened. _You_ have ruined my life.”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?” Neal asked. 

Peter rubbed the bridge of his nose and stared down at the top of his desk. “I should send you back to prison,” he muttered. “That would fix everything, including my blood pressure.”

Neal stared at him for a full minute, feeling like he’d been punched in the gut and had all the air knocked out of him, then he stood up. “Okay, well I’m going home,” he said. “Tell John I said hi if you see him.”

“Neal, wait,” Peter called after him, but Neal ignored him and walked out. “Damn it, I didn’t mean--”

“Goodnight, Peter,” Neal said flatly. He went down the stairs and walked out, leaving Peter sitting alone in his office. 

Neal’s phone rang as he was leaving the federal building. It was Peter, but he answered it anyway. “What, Peter?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Peter said. “What I said. I didn’t mean it.” 

Neal took the phone away from his ear to look at it. “Excuse me, did the great Peter Burke actually just ‘I’m sorry’?”

“Yeah,” Peter said. “That was a shitty thing to say. I wasn’t thinking. This thing with El is really--”

“Don’t ruin it,” Neal said. “Say it again.”

Peter took a breath and said, “I’m sorry, Neal.”

“For?” Neal said, savoring the moment. 

“For being a jackass,” Peter said dutifully. “God, it’s like I’m married to both of you. She does the same thing.”

“Peter, if you would stop comparing me to your wife right now, I would really appreciate it,” Neal said. 

“You do kind of resemble each other,” Peter said thoughtfully. 

Neal held up his hand to hail a taxi. “You’ve got a type,” he said. 

“You are _not_ my type,” Peter said. 

Neal laughed. “Okay, Peter.” A cab pulled over to the curb and he opened the door. “I have to go. See you Monday.”

“See you Monday,” Peter said

Neal hung up and got in the cab.

~~*~~

Peter looked like hell on Monday morning. He was wearing what Elizabeth called his lucky tie, but it didn’t seem to be working because he was a sorry wreck. Peter’s eyes were bloodshot and there was tension around his eyes and mouth from lack of sleep. In the conference room, when Peter sat down and his pant legs hiked up, Neal noticed he was wearing a navy blue sock and a black one. He drank three cups of the disgusting break room coffee before noon and only grunted a negative when Neal offered to pick him up an espresso while he was getting himself one. 

There were no interesting art, jewel or forgery cases in need of Neal’s particular brand of expertise, so he finished the paperwork Diana had given him on Friday before he dived into the painfully dull real estate fraud case Peter had handed him that morning. He did have good coffee though and his socks matched, unlike Peter. He took a little bit of comfort from that. 

Once again, Peter and Neal were the only ones still there late that evening. Neal finished the report he was working on, put his jacket on and went up to Peter’s office. Peter was asleep at his desk with his head down on his folded arms. 

The pink stress ball was on the floor by the door, probably where it had been kicked after Peter had forgotten about it. Neal picked it up and went to stand at Peter’s desk beside him. He leaned over his shoulder and held the smiley face toward Peter as he said Peter’s name softly. 

Peter jerked upright and nearly head-butted Neal in the face. “Easy, tiger,” Neal said, holding his hands up. He held the ball out for Peter to take. 

Peter ignored it. He squinted and blinked a few times to clear his vision, then stood up and put his jacket on. “What time is it?”

“Closing time,” Neal said. When Peter just looked at him, he said, “Nine-fifteen.”

Peter cursed under his breath and left his office, not waiting for Neal to follow. He didn’t walk like he was in a hurry, he walked at a more trudging pace, so Neal kept up with him quite easily. 

“So, did you have a good weekend?” Neal asked. It wasn’t subtle, but Peter wasn’t much for subtlety anyway. “You and Elizabeth go out? Or at least talk?”

“We had dinner,” Peter said. “Dinner where she explained things to me like what she was talking about made perfect sense, and that I would agree was a foregone conclusion. So… she has a boyfriend. I’m supposed to be okay with this because I apparently have one, too. That’s you, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t,” Neal said. He hit the DOWN button on the wall and they waited for the elevator. “So, what are you doing right now?”

“Going home, where I plan to sleep on the couch and pretend that my wife is not out having a date night with John,” Peter said. “I might get drunk. I have a case of beer in the fridge.”

“Peter, it’s Monday,” Neal said pointedly. 

“So?” Peter demanded. “Hey, you don’t know. Your wife isn’t going around acting like everything’s fine and insisting that you now have an _open_ marriage. You’re not the open marriage guy, I am.”

“No, but my girlfriend did blow up in an airplane,” Neal said. He tapped his forehead over his right eyebrow with one finger. “Perspective, Peter.”

“Oh, right,” Peter said. “Sorry.”

The elevator arrived and they both got on. The awkward silence lasted about five floors before Neal broke it. “Come over to my place.”

Peter turned his head to look at him incredulously. “What?”

“Come over to my place,” Neal repeated. He noticed Peter scowling at him. “Oh, come on. Not like _that_. I just meant, Elizabeth’s out with this guy, John. All you’re going to do is go home to an empty house, feel sorry for yourself, get drunk, eat a TV dinner and show up to work tomorrow hung-over and pissed off. Instead of doing that, come over to my place.”

“It’s not empty,” Peter said, but not like he was arguing. “I still have Satchmo.”

“I’ll cook,” Neal said. 

“I hate wine,” Peter said. 

“Go home and let Satchmo out, and bring your case of beer with you when you leave,” Neal suggested. 

Peter didn’t say anything for a long time and Neal turned his head to look at him and see what he was thinking. 

“I’m not having sex with you,” Peter said.

Neal rolled his eyes. “Oh, please,” he said. “I’m not that easy. Besides, I’m wining and dining _you_ , if you think you’re getting sex out of the deal too, you’ve got another thing coming, my friend.”

“You’re just feeling sorry for me,” Peter mumbled. “I hate that.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Neal asked, not bothering to deny it. 

“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Peter said. 

“Right,” Neal said. “You also didn’t cook me breakfast last Tuesday and tell me I have nothing to be ashamed of. Why do you think I threw you out?”

“I don’t know. You didn’t like the eggs?” Peter said. 

Neal smiled faintly and shook his head. “The invitation is open,” he said. “For tonight anyway. If you’d rather stay home and cuddle on the couch with the dog, I won’t be offended.”

“Alright,” Peter said. 

The elevator reached the main floor and they both stepped out. “You’re going to stay home and share a Hungry Man chicken-fried steak with Satchmo, aren’t you?” Neal asked. 

Peter put his hands in the pockets of his jacket and shrugged his shoulders. “Probably,” he said. 

Elizabeth and Neal’s open marriage idea did not fit into Peter’s notion of the way things were supposed to be. In Peter’s world, if his wife decided they were going to have an open marriage and that meant she was going to have a boyfriend, Peter didn’t have a contingency plan for dealing with that. There was no formula for how to handle such a thing in the Boy Scout Handbook. He was obviously not on-board with the idea and would probably need some convincing, otherwise it wasn’t going to matter if Peter loved his wife completely or not, Elizabeth was going to end up being asked for a divorce just so he could have his upside-down world returned to right-side-up.

Neal decided not to push him. If he pushed Peter, Peter would just suspect he was up to something and ruin the evening for both of them. Besides, Neal wasn’t about to seduce the man just to protect his cheating wife and save his perfect marriage for him. There were still a million and one reasons why having an affair with Peter Burke was a horrible idea. 

“Well, if I don’t see you later, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Neal said. 

“See you,” Peter said. 

Neal left Peter in the lobby and went to catch a cab home.

~~*~~

There was chicken baking in the oven and Beethoven’s _Für Elise_ playing on the stereo when Peter knocked on the door. Neal was painting a melting clock sliding over the edge of a table that stood the foreground of a desert landscape while he drank a glass of Pinot Grigio that was just a little too dry for his tastes. He didn’t immediately put the brush down to answer the door and finished adding the pale squiggle of white to the side of the clock that gave it the illusion of shine before he put his wine down. Peter knocked again, this time a little harder. 

“Just a minute,” Neal called. He picked his wine glass back up and downed the contents, then dumped his brushes in the pot of turpentine by the easel. Peter knocked again, this time more of a bang. “Peter, if you wake up June, I can’t protect you.” 

Soft laughter on the other side of the door from Peter had Neal pausing with his hand on the knob. “Peter, are you drunk?” he asked, opening the door a crack. 

“Little bit,” Peter mumbled to the crack in the door.

Neal swung the door open and stood in the doorway. Peter had a plastic grocery bag in one hand and an out-of-focus look in his bloodshot eyes. He smiled at Neal, then noticed he was naked from the waist up and frowned at him. 

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Peter said. “We shouldn’t do this.”

“Shouldn’t have conversation over food and drinks in the evening?” Neal asked. “Peter, where do you come up with these rules?”

“That’s not what Elizabeth’s going to think we’re doing,” Peter pointed out. Neal had a streak of aquamarine blue on the left side of his chest just below his nipple and Peter liked it there. He kept looking at it. “You were painting,” he said. “Can I come in or what?”

“Do you honestly care what Elizabeth thinks right now?” Neal asked. He stood back so Peter could enter the apartment and closed the door behind him. “What’s in the bag?”

“Beer,” Peter said. He took one out and set it aside before he opened the fridge and started unpacking the cans into it. “Sure you don’t want one?”

Neal held up the bottle of wine he had been about to open and shook his head. “I’m good.”

“What are you cooking?” Peter asked. He finished putting his beer in the refrigerator and cracked open the can he’d put on counter. “It smells really good.”

“Chicken parmesan,” Neal said. “I didn’t think you were going to show, so I didn’t make anything to go with it.”

“It’s okay, we’ve got beer… and whatever that is,” Peter said. 

“Zinfandel,” Neal said. 

Peter made a disgusted face and drank his beer. He looked around the apartment and frowned. “Where’s the little guy?” he asked. “Mozzie. Where’s he at tonight?”

Neal leaned his hip against the counter beside Peter and shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. “Wherever he goes when he’s not here. Let’s see, today’s Monday, so he’d be at Sunday, probably.”

“Wonder what that’s like,” Peter said. He remembered Mozzie’s Tuesday safe house and smiled. “What were you painting?”

“Dalí,” Neal said. He gestured at the canvas, inviting Peter to go take a look if he wanted to. “The Persistence of Memory.” 

Peter walked over to the easel and leaned over to peer closely at the painting. Even the brushstrokes were perfect. Neal didn’t have an artistic style of his own, unless being able to mimic the distinct style of any artist out there was a style unto itself, but that made his talent no less remarkable. “Amazing,” Peter said. “Just… amazing.” 

“Thank you,” Neal said, pleased by the compliment. Peter saw a lot of art and a lot of art forgeries. Such high praise from him was not empty. 

Neal checked the chicken, found that it was done, and took it out of the oven. He put the chicken on plates and set them down on the table. Peter turned away from the painting finally and sat down at the table in front of one of the plates. He picked up his fork and started to eat while Neal went to change the music to something else. 

“Do we have to listen to classical?” Peter asked. 

Neal half turned to him, holding a CD in his hand. He held it up to show Peter. “It’s Glenn Gould,” he said, like he could not believe Peter wouldn’t want to listen to it. 

Peter wrinkled his nose in distaste. 

“We’re not listening to baseball,” Neal said. 

Peter snorted soft laugher and stabbed a bite of chicken with his fork. “The Beatles? Rolling Stones? Anything from this century, really.”

It was Neal’s turn to make the wrinkled nose face of disgust and shake his head. “I have The Cure.” When Peter didn’t veto that, Neal dug around until he found the album and put it in. He pressed PLAY and sat down. “How’s your dinner?”

“Good,” Peter said. “Thanks. I fed the chicken-fried steak to Satchmo.”

Neal ate a bite of chicken. “You actually had one of those?”

“I think it was supposed to be roast beef and mashed potatoes,” Peter said. “This is better.”

Neal grinned, amused and oddly pleased. “Thanks.”

Peter got up to get another beer and throw his empty can away. “So, you remember what I said the other morning?” he asked. “About… ah, you shouldn’t be ashamed because--”

“Yeah, Peter, I remember,” Neal said. His stomach gave a sick roll at the prospect of revisiting that conversation, but he tried not to let it show. “What about it?”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Peter said. He stood leaning against the counter and finished his beer, crushed the can and got another one out of the fridge. “You’re right, I don’t know. Not really.”

“Okay, Peter.”

“I mean it, I’m sorry.”

“Peter,” Neal said, trying to smile the tension away, “you’ve got to stop saying that. It’ll become a habit if you’re not careful.”

Peter snuffed soft laughter and returned to his seat at the table. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Seems like I’ve suddenly got all these things to be sorry for though.”

“No, you don’t,” Neal assured him. He picked up his wine and drank, watching Peter’s throat work as he swallowed the beer he was drinking. “You’re just going through a period of adjustment, that’s all.”

“Is that what you call it?” Peter asked. He laughed. “A period of adjustment. Pfft.”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Neal said. 

Neal set his wine glass down and picked up his fork. He sensed Peter move in the peripheral of his vision but didn’t think anything of it until Peter’s hand got too close to his face, then Neal lifted his head to look at him and Peter kissed him. It wasn’t a deep kiss and it lasted less than a second, but it shocked him and Neal jerked back to stare at him. Peter looked startled by his own actions and suddenly a little afraid. They sat there without moving, barely breathing, with _From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea_ playing softly behind them and the minutes stretching like the minutes in a Salvador Dalí painting until they seemed eternal. Every single reason why moving at all was a bad idea flickered through Neal’s mind, only to be rapidly discarded because the longer they just sat there, the corner of the table between them and Peter wearing that look on his face that verged on fear, the less Neal could stand it. 

Neal leaned over the edge of the table to kiss Peter and this time it wasn’t a brief, hesitant touch of lips. It pushed Peter to react in kind, to return it, and Peter sounded almost grateful when he moaned into Neal’s mouth and kissed him back. Neal cupped the back of Peter’s neck with his hand and pulled him in as he stood, forcing Peter to either break the kiss or stand with him. Peter knocked his chair over as he got to his feet, still kissing Neal, and pulled him against him. His mouth tasted sour with beer and the back of his tongue was cold from it when Neal’s tongue stroked over it. He expected Peter to kiss and touch him with his eyes closed, but they were open and staring back at him when he looked. 

Peter pressed against him until the corner of the table was digging into the small of Neal’s back and Peter’s knee was between his legs, and suddenly the rapid pounding of Neal’s heart wasn’t desire, it was alarm. He couldn’t do this. He was so in love in with this man, with Peter, but he couldn’t do this now. Not like this. It would be easy, but it wouldn’t be honest. He would be taking advantage and Peter wouldn’t thank him for it later.

Neal put his hands on Peter’s chest and gently but firmly pushed him back. “No,” he said. He was panting softly and the sound of it made him laugh, but he still shook his head no when Peter started to lean in again. “No, Peter. Stop.”

Peter let him go like Neal had suddenly become burning hot to the touch and backed away from him. “Jesus Christ, Neal. I can’t believe I did that,” Peter said. He looked stunned and ashamed and, once again, he looked scared. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking or how--”

“Shh, stop it,” Neal said. He bent down to pick up the chair Peter had knocked over and set it back upright. When he stood back up, Peter was still watching him like he expected Neal to haul off and hit him and he wouldn’t even try to defend himself if he did. It broke Neal’s heart a little bit. “Peter, stop it,” he said. “Please. This? It’s not that. And you, you’re not them. Don’t do that to yourself.” The look didn’t leave his face and Neal sighed. “I’m not rejecting you, either,” he said. 

Peter nodded slowly. “Actually, that’s pretty much exactly what it feels like,” he said. Neal laughed and Peter smiled hesitantly back. “I shouldn’t have done that though. I’m--”

“If you tell me you’re sorry one more time for something you have no business being sorry for, I’m going to hit you,” Neal warned. “Maybe not hard--I’m not a violent guy--but I’ll still hit you. Stop it.”

“Okay, fine, but I just want you to know, I don’t think of you like that,” Peter said. At Neal’s blank look, he made a vague rolling gesture with one hand. “Like you’re an object. You know, the sex toy, punching bag thing you were talking about. I don’t.”

“I know that, Peter,” Neal said. “Come on, let’s sit back down.”

“I just… Is that why you threw me out the other day?” Peter asked. “Did I look at you like--”

“No, Peter,” Neal said. He decided to sit back down himself and hope Peter followed suit. “Wrong look. I threw you out because I told you that I couldn’t stand it if you looked at me like that--like you were sorry for me, like you pitied me--then you did. Now please sit back down.”

“Okay,” Peter said. He sat, but he seemed nervous and restless about it. “Jesus, I’m confused,” he finally said. 

Neal laughed. “Not used to me being the voice of reason in the room, are you?”

“No, actually,” Peter said. “No, I’m pretty used to you being single-minded, selfish and unreasonable.”

“That’s so sweet,” Neal said dryly. He got up to take their dinner plates to the sink. “How about dessert?” 

“I don’t know. Is it some kind of fancy, rich thing with a French name?” Peter asked. “Because, then no.”

Neal opened the freezer and took out a carton of caramel swirl Häagen-Dazs. He got them each a spoon and brought the carton back to the table. “I think Häagen-Dazs is Swedish, but I could be wrong,” was all he said. He smiled and dug his spoon into the ice cream. Peter watched him eat for a minute before he did the same.

~~*~~

On Tuesday, they had a new case involving a poisoned dead guy named Joe and corporate espionage at a tech firm called Novice, which sounded to Neal like exactly the sort of thing what would not end well and probably involve him being shot at. At least, it sounded that way until he found out Peter would be the one going undercover this time. Then it just sounded like something that would involve _Peter_ being shot at, which wasn’t a hell of a lot better. 

Neal wanted to insist that he go in instead of Peter, but Peter had the accounting background, Peter was the boss, and Peter’s socks matched and his shirt was pressed and he was smiling, so Neal said nothing because Peter would just frown at him like he was up to something. Peter was smiling through his hangover and didn’t say a word all day about Elizabeth and her boyfriend, except to say that he had Elizabeth and the FBI (not in that order) and no regrets about not being a big-shot Fortune 500 accountant. He also did not once mention the previous evening to Neal at all. Since not mentioning it was better than anything Peter would have said, Neal left it alone. The possibility of a richer life that Peter might have had if only he had made other choices; that one, Neal couldn’t help poking with a stick just a little. Sure, it was spiteful, but after Peter demanded he let Diana baby-sit Mozzie and tried to feed him a line of crap about how they were “working on this together,” Neal didn’t feel so bad about giving him a hard time. 

Mozzie looked like his shiny little head was going to pop and Neal could not believe he was actually the one telling two other people to _please_ try to behave like adults. He suddenly felt like that kid in the book who wakes up one morning and the cat is chasing the dog and everything is completely the opposite of the way things usually are. Only less fun. 

On Wednesday, Peter got Neal a job in marketing at Novice so he could investigate the junior executives. He met Peter in his swanky hotel suite that night a little after 11:00 PM and they talked about the case. Peter got room service, offered to share, then sat at the coffee table wearing pajamas and a terrycloth bathrobe while he ate his steak in front of him and drank cup after tiny cup of espresso. 

Neal watched him eat, amused and pleasantly full himself on expensive cuisine he had conned his way out of paying for. There was really no more satisfying meal than one taken like the spoils of war. That actually counted with a lot of things that were not food as well. 

The picture of Elizabeth that Peter kept on his desk at work was on the coffee table and Neal picked it up. “So, are things better?” At Peter’s inquiring look, he showed him the picture. “With Elizabeth.”

Peter nodded and shrugged at the same time, which meant nothing. “We’re… She’s… Everything’s exactly the same as it’s always been. At least that’s how she’s acting,” Peter said. 

“Except she has a boyfriend,” Neal said. 

“Yeah, except for that,” Peter said. “We still… Oh, never mind.”

“You still love each other,” Neal said. “Maybe you’re hoping the boyfriend’s a passing thing?”

“Yes!” Peter said. “Like… Like a midlife crisis sort of thing. Women have those, right?”

Neal grinned. He did not point out, no matter how much he was tempted to, that Elizabeth’s boyfriend, John, was not a Lamborghini or a Harley. People had a way of sticking sometimes after the novelty would have worn off on an expensive new toy.

“Sure they do,” Neal said. He put the picture of Elizabeth back on the table and sat back to loosen his tie. 

“Besides, now I don’t even have the right to be mad about it, do I?” Peter said. He ate a bite of steak and chewed with obscene relish. Then he pointed his fork at Neal before stabbing another piece. “Because of you.”

“A single kiss does not a relationship make, Peter,” Neal said.

“Ha, right. That was to kisses what this steak is to lunchmeat,” Peter said, holding up the bite of steak on his fork to illustrate before putting it in his mouth. “But no, it’s not a _relationship_. For one thing, you’re my CI, for God’s sake. I could lose my damn job.”

“Lunchmeat, huh?” Neal said, gloating just a little 

Peter rolled his eyes. “Of course that’s the part you actually hear,” he said. “The rest just goes right by you, no impression at all.”

“Oh, relax,” Neal said. “You’re not going to lose your job, Agent Burke.”

“That’s right, I’m not,” Peter said. “Do you know why? Because it’s never going to happen again.”

“Is that a challenge?” Neal asked. 

“It’s a fact.”

“Uh huh. Because you know how I feel about a good challenge.”

“No, Neal.”

Neal just smirked and unfastened his tie. He watched Peter and let the silk of the tie slide around his collar as he removed it. Peter watched him back with his chin tilted and his jaw clenched, with a combination of irritation and hunger that only made Neal’s smile widen and become sharp as a sickle blade. 

Peter put his fork and steak knife down and started to get up. He lifted half out of his seat, then just sat back down, seeming to slump there. “Put your tie back on, Caffrey,” he said a little hoarsely. “This isn’t a titty bar and you are not a pole dancer.”

Neal stopped in the process of unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt and stared at Peter, hardly able to believe he had just said that. “God, Peter. So many jokes right now--”

Peter realized what he had just said and the unintentional innuendo Neal was finding so amusing and flushed. “Shut up. You know what I meant,” Peter said.

Neal stood to finish unbuttoning his shirt and Peter’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?” Peter demanded. “No, Neal. Stop that. Right now. Put your shirt back on.”

Neal shrugged out of his shirt and dropped it on the sofa. “Oh, come on, Peter,” he said. “You don’t want me to stop.” 

He kept his eyes on Peter as he unfastened his belt and walked around the coffee table to him. Peter leapt up from the couch as he drew near, but Neal just walked right up to him and crowded into his space until Peter couldn’t take a deep breath without their bodies touching. Peter had his hands stuffed in the pockets of his robe and they were fisted, like the rest of his body, hard with tension. 

“You don’t know what I want,” Peter said. The intended damper effect of the words was ruined by the way his eyes continuously shifted between Neal’s eyes and his mouth. “I said no.”

Neal leaned in toward him, their breath mingling as he almost brushed his lips over Peter’s before drawing slightly back, teasing him to close the distance. “I heard you,” he murmured, “but you didn’t mean no.”

Peter put his hands over Neal’s as he started to unfasten his trousers to stop his hands. Neal pressed his lips to Peter’s in a feather soft kiss and Peter’s fingers clenched. “I can’t,” Peter said. “My wife--”

“Already thinks it’s happening,” Neal said. 

“My job--”

“Will be safe.”

“Neal, I don’t _do_ things like this.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” Peter swallowed and closed his eyes. “Because it’s not who I am.”

“By that logic, we are defined by the people who fuck us, Peter,” Neal said. “How awful if that were true.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Peter said, eyes snapping open. “You’re putting words in my mouth--”

Neal laughed, a soft, chuckle rolling in his throat, and kissed him gently again. “I know,” he said. “But the world’s not as black and white as you would have it. Come on.”

Peter was fairly shuddering with tension, torn between his soapbox ideas about what was right and what he desperately wanted. “Maybe the world’s not, but this is,” he said. 

Neal pressed his smiling mouth to Peter’s and let one of his hands move from the fly of his pants to slide over the back of Peter’s hand, up his wrist. Peter trembled and his pulse was racing under Neal’s fingers. “Trust me, this is a grey area if there ever was one,” he said softly. 

On the sofa on the other side of the table, Neal’s phone rang. He didn’t even glance in its direction. 

Peter cleared his throat. “Maybe you should answer that,” he said. “Could be important.”

“It isn’t,” Neal said. 

“It could be Sara,” Peter said. 

Neal smiled faintly. “Could be,” he said without interest. 

The phone was still ringing. Most likely, it was Mozzie.

“You don’t want this,” Peter said. 

Neal took Peter’s wrist in his hand and guided his hand to his stomach. Peter’s fingers brushed over his belly and Neal pushed his hand lower, into the waistband of his trousers. Peter did not snatch his hand away. “You don’t know what I want,” Neal said, mimicking him. He smiled and leaned into Peter. “Which is remarkable for someone with your skills of observation. Come on, Peter. For just an hour, put Sir Galahad away. You can have what you want.”

“And you get what you want,” Peter said. He wasn’t fishing for a compliment--for Neal to say that he wanted him--he was still a little suspicious of Neal’s motives. 

Neal didn’t let it bother him. “Always,” he said. 

Peter extricated his wrist from Neal’s grasp, but instead of pulling away from him, he put both of his hands on Neal’s waist and let his fingers lightly stroke his skin. “Not always,” he said. 

Neal smiled and tugged open the belt tie of Peter’s robe. “Most of the time,” he said. “But that’s no reason not to _give it to me_.”

Peter’s lips twitched in an involuntary smile. “Nice.”

“You like what I did there?” Neal asked, grinning. 

“Oh, yeah, it was real subtle,” Peter said. 

“I thought it might have been a little cheesy,” Neal said. 

“Yeah, but… I liked where you were going with it,” Peter said. He was letting his hands lightly trail up and down along Neal’s sides by his hips. He still hesitated, still lightly shook with it, but he looked Neal in the eye and wasn’t embarrassed by what he wanted. “Neal, how can you want something like… this? I mean, after you were--”

“I know what you meant,” Neal said, cutting him off. He slid his hands up Peter’s chest to play his fingers in the back of his hair. “Because I’m allowed to want what I want and no one gets to say I can’t. I can say no or I can say yes and, no matter what anyone thinks, I still have that power. It’s mine.” Neal leaned up to put his mouth close to Peter’s ear. “I choose you. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

“What _can_ I do?” Peter asked, sounding exasperated. He took Neal’s face in his hands and let his fingers pet through his hair, brushing it back from his face as he waited for Neal to open his eyes. When he did, Peter kissed him lightly. He was still trembling with the tension of his carefully held control, but he didn’t push it. He kissed him softly, then rested his forehead against Neal’s and sighed. “What can I do?” he asked again, softer.

Neal knew he had won, but he didn’t gloat about it or Peter might easily spook. At least, that’s what he was thinking right before Peter grabbed him and started backing him around the sofa toward the bedroom. Neal laughed, kissing him as he pulled the completely unflattering bathrobe off Peter’s shoulders and did his best not to back into any walls or fall over anything. He hoped Peter wasn’t about to try lifting him up to carry him over the threshold or he might have a few choice things to say about that, even if it did ruin the mood. 

“What’s so funny?” Peter asked, trying to talk and lick Neal’s tongue at the same time. He realized what he was doing and laughed too, but he didn’t stop trying to kiss him either, which made it impossible for Neal to answer.

Neal unbuttoned the shirt of Peter’s pajamas and was about to pull it off when the back of his thighs met the edge of the bed and he abruptly sat down. He shifted his attention to the drawstring tie of the bottoms without a hitch. He untied them as Peter pushed him back on the bed and started to climb over him. Neal shoved his arm a little to get him to stop and look up. 

“Condoms,” he said. When Peter just raised his eyebrows and didn’t move, Neal nodded his head toward the bathroom. “Most hotels have them in the bathroom.”

Peter sucked the back of his teeth and sat back. “I don’t have anything,” he said. “Do you have something? Something you picked up in pr--”

“ _No_ , Peter,” Neal said, revolted and a little freaked out by the idea. “I’m clean, but still.”

Peter frowned at him. “Still what?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Neal said. He shoved his arm again, this time hard enough that Peter had to get off him. “Because it makes cleanup easier and I don’t carry lube around in my pockets at work. I’ll get them.”

Neal went into the bathroom and came back a minute later with a couple of lubricated condoms in wrappers that he tossed onto the bed. Peter hadn’t moved and lay on the bed watching him with his hotel pajamas rumpled and loose, but still on. Neal leaned back against the dresser by the wall and crossed his arms over his chest, watching him back. There was a reserved feeling of discomfort in the room that hadn’t been there before and Neal didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what the problem was. 

“Second thoughts?” he asked.

Peter picked up one of the condoms and waved it by a corner of the wrapper as he thought. “You know we’re going to have to talk about it eventually, don’t you?”

Neal cocked his head a little. “About what?” he demanded. He was losing his patience a little bit. “I told you, I’m _clean_. If you don’t believe me, you can check the results of the tests they did during my physical when I was released.”

“No, I believe you,” Peter said. 

Neal threw out his hands at his sides. “Then what are we talking about?”

Peter looked at him straight on and stared at him. 

About prison rape. Right. Neal should have known that. He didn’t want to talk about it, but it was the kind of thing Peter would feel the need to discuss, especially if they actually did this. However, at the moment _this_ was starting to look like it was once again in doubt. 

“Fuck,” Neal muttered. He raked his hands through his hair. “Fine, we’ll talk about it. Do you want to do that _now_?” 

“Are you going to be okay if we do this and don’t talk about it now?” Peter asked. 

Neal dropped his hands to his sides and sighed. “Peter, if we talk about it now, _this_? is not happening.”

“And you’d rather do this,” Peter guessed. 

“Hell yes, I’d rather do this,” Neal said. 

Peter sat up and shrugged out of his pajama shirt. He held a hand out toward Neal and made a beckoning gesture with his fingers. “Then come here.”

Neal crossed the few short feet to the bed and stood there looking down at Peter’s bent head and his bare shoulders as he leaned over to untie Neal’s shoes, then unbutton and unzip his pants. He did it all with calm efficiency, nothing lingering that might be thought an attempt at sensuality, but that was Peter for you, and Neal felt his heart thump a little heavy in his chest. Felt a familiar rush of affection for him that made him smile. 

There were a lot of reasons why this could have been awkward and embarrassing, but at some point, while Neal was kicking his shoes aside and stepping out of his pants and Peter was throwing his own pajama bottoms and his underwear over the side of the bed, they both realized that it was still just them, and what they had always been to each other, they still were. Neal wasn’t running away and Peter wasn’t chasing after him, he wasn’t up to anything and Peter didn’t even give a damn if he was, it was just them and they were friends if nothing else. They admired and respected one another as they did no one else. There was more, there was genuine carnal desire, but it had been pushed down for so long that it almost felt like digging to reach for it. 

They were both shivering when Neal got up on the bed and Peter rose to his knees to pull him against him and kiss him. Everywhere Peter put his hands, Neal felt like his skin twitched like the pelt of a cat until, like a cat, Peter petted it away. He ran his hands over Neal’s skin, kissed him and went over the paths of warmth left by his fingers with his mouth. There was very little hesitation in him now that Peter had committed himself to what he was doing. He was careful and deliberate about it, but everywhere he touched, he was searching for whatever Neal liked. When he found something, when Neal moaned or made one of those soft gasping sounds as he caught his breath, Peter smiled and made a low, pleased noise in his throat.

Peter was on top of him, nuzzling into the curve of his shoulder and neck when Neal reached across the bed blindly to feel for a condom. He snagged one with his fingers and brought it to his mouth to rip the wrapper open with his teeth. Peter heard it and lifted his head to look. 

“If you try to put that on me with your mouth--”

Neal blinked up at him. “What?” He laughed. “I’m not a hooker, Peter.”

“No, of course not,” Peter said, but he smiled. “You’re a show-off though.”

Neal lifted his head to look down between their bodies and rolled the condom on Peter’s cock slowly, watching his face. “Doesn’t really seem like the time,” he said. “You okay?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Peter asked. 

“Nobody gave me a script,” Neal said. He put his arms around him and stroked them up Peter’s back. He ran his tongue over Peter’s Adam’s apple to his chin and lightly nipped him there. “Roll over,” he panted. 

Peter turned his head to look at him, searching his face. “Why?” he asked cautiously. 

Neal laughed and ran his hands down his back to grab Peter’s ass and haul him against him. “I want to be on top,” he said. 

Peter groaned and let his eyes fall closed briefly as he swayed into the pull of Neal’s hands and ground against him. “Just so we’re clear, by on top--”

“I mean on top,” Neal said. His voice was rough with pleasure as he continued to rock against Peter and Peter instinctively matched the rhythm. He felt Peter shiver under his hands and turned his head into the side of his neck to lick and nip at the tendon in the side of his throat, at his earlobe. “By on top, I mean I’ll ride you. Come on, Peter, roll over.”

Peter kissed him instead. His hands cupped Neal’s face and he slid his tongue inside, over Neal’s tongue, over the roof of his mouth, their breath hitching as they got lost in it for a few minutes. Then Neal’s tongue snuck into Peter’s mouth like the hand of a thief and he was being kissed in a way that he had never been kissed before. It wasn’t tender or romantic, though it was sweet. It was filthy and as sexual as two bodies writhing on a bed. He used his tongue and his teeth and sucked when Peter kissed him back, sending a shock of pleasure and desire for more right to the pit of his belly. 

Peter moved a hand down the bed, between their bodies, and pressed a finger into Neal’s body. Neal’s eyes widened in surprise, but he rocked against his hand encouragingly and Peter pushed it in.

“Quick learner, aren’t you?” Neal whispered around a breathless laugh. “Hook your finger. It’s not a remote control button.”

Peter laughed and did as he said, pleased when Neal moaned and arched a little away from the bed beneath him. “Really?” he whispered back. “Here I thought we were looking for ESPN.”

Neal laughed. It became a loud moan as Peter’s fingertip rubbed over his prostate. He caught the back of Peter’s neck in his hand and pulled him into a biting kiss. “It’s better with two,” he panted. 

Peter added a second finger and worked them in and out a few times until Neal’s fingers became sharp against the back of his shoulders. He spread them in little scissoring motions and Neal cried out jerked beneath him, gasping and shaking. 

“Are you okay?” Peter asked him.

Neal nodded.

“You still want to be on top?”

He nodded again and Peter’s fingers and the weight of his body were suddenly gone as he rolled to his back on the bed. Neal lay there for a few seconds, just breathing, then he rolled onto his knees and threw a leg over Peter to straddle him. Peter’s hands went immediately to his hips to help steady him and Neal looked into his face and held his gaze as he sat back and slowly pushed himself down on Peter’s cock. Peter gritted his teeth and held on tighter, his hands sliding up to hold Neal by the waist as he suppressed the urge to thrust. Neal hissed through his teeth at the soft burn of his body stretching around Peter’s cock as he sank down on it. Peter moaned and rocked a little beneath him and Neal smiled. He watched him through his lowered eyelashes and began to move, lifting up and sinking back down with slow, deep rolling motions of his hips. Peter caught on and followed his movements, thrusting with the same slow, deep rocking motions. His fingers were pressing painfully into Neal’s hips, hard enough to leave bruises, and he was gasping and shaking as he controlled himself and kept himself carefully in check. Neal ran his hands down his own body to his thighs, feeling the muscles there bunch as he rode him, keeping that same excruciatingly slow pace until he thought Peter must break or lose his mind. He was moaning and his moans only sounded more strained as he made himself keep to the pace Neal had set. 

Taking pity on him, Neal leaned down to kiss him and whispered, “Peter, if you don’t like the pace, change it.”

Peter narrowed his eyes on him. “I don’t want to hurt--”

“You won’t,” Neal promised. “You want to go faster?”

Peter ran a hand through Neal’s hair to the back of his neck, held him like that, and thrust a little faster, a little harder. “God, yes,” he breathed. “Okay?”

Little bursts of pleasure sparked along Neal’s spine and he sucked his bottom lip between his teeth, whimpering, breath hitching with every thrust. He nodded and stayed leaned over like that, hands on Peter’s chest, their stomachs sliding together as they moved, his face always close to Peter’s to kiss him or be kissed. Peter kept one hand on Neal’s hip to hold him and the other on the back of Neal’s neck, but he didn’t pull at him, he petted him with fingers that were gentle in contrast to the hard, quick way he fucked him. Sweat broke out on their bodies and soaked Neal’s hair, which hung in Peter’s face and got in his own eyes. He tossed his head back to throw it out of his face and Peter leaned up to lick away a drop of sweat sliding down his throat. Neal moaned and Peter pressed his mouth to the hollow of his throat to feel the way his voice vibrated on his lips. 

Neal could feel his orgasm building and finally pushed Peter’s hand away to sit back. It receded a little, but he didn’t slow and it started to build again. He braced himself with his hands on Peter’s stomach and looked down at him, at the familiar planes and angles of his face in the dark. Peter was not beautiful or pretty, but he was handsome in the way that some ordinary men were, the attraction compounded by the helpless way Neal loved him. 

He smiled down at him. A moment later, Peter smiled back. 

Neal’s back bowed and he shuddered to a stop when he came, his head lolling back on his shoulders. He moaned deeply and gasped as Peter kept moving, fucking him through it as bright bursts of pleasure fizzled out in his fingertips and the tips of his toes. He opened his eyes a little while later to find Peter staring up at him. He started to move again.

Peter sat up to kiss him and wrapped his arms around Neal’s waist so he could roll him onto his back. He held Neal’s hands, their fingers laced together against the silk sheets, and threw his weight behind his thrusts, forcing a cry out of Neal that seemed to echo in the dark. Neal wrapped his legs around Peter’s hips and squeezed, holding on and pulling him in. 

“Peter,” Neal whispered in his ear, gasping, “I’d like to-- _ah_ … but I’m not… gonna be good for more… for a while.”

“Am I hurting you?” Peter asked him, slowing a little. 

“No,” Neal said. And he wasn’t. Everything throbbed and there were places where he felt oversensitive and aching, but he wasn’t in pain. Not even close.

Peter nodded and kissed him as he quickened his pace again. “Almost,” he promised. 

Neal moaned and whimpered into his mouth as Peter kissed him, but he kissed him back and rocked up into his thrusts. Peter threaded his fingers through Neal’s hair to the back of his head to pull him in and nipped at his mouth as he kissed him. There was a scar there in Neal’s scalp, but Peter didn’t feel it. Peter was kissing Neal and Neal was whining and moaning, pleasure spent and exhausted, when he came. Peter cried out into Neal’s mouth and clutched at him, his eyes going wide. Neal saw his surprise and laughed breathlessly. He tightened his legs around him and rocked with him through it. Peter shivered and pushed him down into the soft mattress as he fucked Neal through the last pleasure of his orgasm.

He slowed gradually. When he stopped moving, he remained propped on his forearms with his head hanging, forehead resting on Neal’s shoulder. Neal stroked his hands up and down his back, fingers skating in the chilling sweat on his skin, and Peter shivered. 

“We should turn the air conditioner down,” Neal observed. 

Peter laughed. Neither of them made any move to get up and do it. 

Neal ran his fingers through Peter’s sweaty hair and leaned up to kiss him. Peter lazily kissed him back withdrew from his body to collapse on top of him. “Sorry,” he muttered, but he didn’t move off of him.

Neal broke the kiss and rested his chin on Peter’s shoulder. “Are you freaking out right now?” he asked. 

“Not much,” Peter said.

“Wore you out, didn’t I?” Neal asked, grinning. 

Peter snorted laughter and finally shifted enough to lay mostly beside him. “Vain as a peacock,” he muttered. He reached down to take the condom off and put his hand over the side of the bed to drop it into the tiny hotel waste basket under the nightstand. “Arrogant. Conceited. Smug--”

“Intense, passionate--Really, I can’t tell if you’re insulting me or flattering me,” Neal said. 

“Do you feel flattered?” Peter asked. 

“Considering where we are right now?” Neal asked. “I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself, yes.”

Amused, Peter just moved his hand up Neal’s side to pet his fingers up the side of his neck. “Good,” he said. He felt Neal’s breath shake as he inhaled and smiled. “Wore you out, too, Caffrey.”

“And you’re not above gloating about it,” Neal murmured. He slid his hand along the bed and under Peter to pinch one of his nipples. Peter grunted in annoyance and Neal just laughed. “We should go clean up.”

Peter made a discontented grumbling sound in his throat and didn’t move. “I don’t feel like standing in the shower.”

“Well, yeah, but I should go and you shouldn’t fall asleep like that,” Neal said. 

Peter picked his head up and looked at him in a confused way. “Why?”

“Because dried come is like the most hellish kind of glue to--”

“No, why should you go?”

Neal blinked at him. “Because… I’m me and you’re you and that’s probably the smartest thing to do?” he said. 

Peter scoffed and put his head back down. “Like you do that often,” he said. “Just stay here.”

“Peter, I really would like a shower,” Neal protested. 

Peter reached over and lightly shoved him. “So go take a shower. The shower in here’s like those showers they have at those fancy spas. I took one this morning and I didn’t want to leave.”

Somewhere in the suite Peter’s phone started to ring. It was almost 1:30 in the morning, so there were only a couple of people it could be and a limited number of reasons they would be calling at such a time. Peter would of course know that, he was used to getting those late night phone calls, and his weren’t always of the emergency variety.

“Maybe you should answer that,” Neal said. He hadn’t moved from the bed. 

Peter grunted in acknowledgment, but he didn’t move. 

“Could be Elizabeth,” Neal said. 

“Probably,” Peter said. 

Neal gave a mental shrug and pushed himself up from the bed. He went into the bathroom and the shower was just as fantastic as Peter had said. He stayed in there for half an hour. When he got out, he realized he didn’t have anything to wear to sleep in, not even silly baby blue pajamas like the ones Peter had been wearing. He decided it didn’t matter, really, all things--things like really incredible sex with Peter--considered. He got back into the bed with him and Peter, in his sleep, hooked an arm around his waist and pulled him closer.

~~*~~

In the morning, Peter cursed him from the bathroom as he cleaned up and Neal very carefully did not laugh or tell him “I told you so,” though he was sorely tempted. He got dressed while Peter was in the shower and left so he could go home and change into a different suit before he had to be at his desk at Novice.

Mozzie had found sheet music that had to have come from the music box in Diana’s briefcase and met with him at lunch. Neal caught Jessica Breslin doing a piss-poor job of tailing him. He took her back to the 21st floor with him and Peter was his usual insensitive self, but when they were done talking to her, they still knew more than they had before. Peter was having dinner at 8:00 PM with Wesley Kent, Novice’s CEO, and Jessica Breslin just happened to know the password to get into Kent’s office. Unfortunately, it meant Peter would have to get the man to spout some pompous proverb in Latin, but Neal had faith in Peter’s ability to do that. If he weren’t an FBI agent, Peter Burke would have made a hell of a con man.

“Be careful, Peter,” Neal told him. They were at the hotel suite before Peter left for his dinner date with Kent. “Joseph Hayes was poisoned, remember? Don’t leave your drink unattended.”

“I’m not going to a frat party,” Peter said. 

“No, but I think the same rule could easily be applied here,” Neal said.

Peter was standing in front of the mirror fixing his tie, so Neal saw him roll his eyes. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “What are you doing tonight?”

Neal was sitting on the bed, leaned back on his arms with his legs out in front of him crossed at the ankle. “What am _I_ doing?” He lifted his eyebrows in question. “I’m going home to let Mozzie off the hook for a while. Maybe I’ll paint. Have a glass of wine. I have a rosé that’s a very pretty shade of pink. I hope it doesn’t taste like sow spit.”

“Oh, well… that sounds…” 

“You could come over,” Neal suggested. 

“No,” Peter said quickly. “I shouldn’t. Besides, it’s all the way across town and it’ll blow my cover here if any of Kent’s minions say anything.”

“About?” Neal asked. 

“About my not being in the swanky hotel suite they’re paying for,” Peter said. 

“You could leave early,” Neal said. “Come back here. If anyone asks… you went to see a friend and you would really appreciate it if the minion in question or Mr. Kent himself wouldn’t mention it because your wife would be furious and take the kids.”

“We don’t have any kids,” Peter pointed out. 

“The dog, then,” Neal said. 

“Who would even believe that?” Peter asked. 

Neal smirked. “Men get a kick out of pulling one over on the missus, even vicariously,” he said. “It’s one of those boys club things, Peter. You know that.”

“I’d have to make you a woman,” Peter said. 

Neal shrugged. “As long I don’t have to wear a dress. Or heels. Do you have any idea how uncomfortable Manolo Blahniks are?”

Peter turned away from the mirror. “No, and I don’t want to know how _you_ know something like that either.”

“Alex has a couple pairs,” Neal said. 

“So, she told you how uncomfortable they are and--”

“Well, yeah, but I may have had to wear them this one time in Singapore for a--”

“No.” Peter held up a hand to stop him. “Just… no.”

Neal smiled and moved his eyebrows up and down suggestively. “Come on. You’re imagining it.”

“Yeah, and I find it disturbing,” Peter said. He considered it a few seconds, then said, “You weren’t a prostitute, were you?”

“Peter, have you ever considered that you may have a thing for--No, I wasn’t,” Neal said. 

“I just think Singapore and for some reason it makes me think prostitution,” Peter said. 

Neal grinned. “I may have pretended to be one once… but not in high heels and not in Singapore.”

Curiosity got the better of him and Peter asked, “Then where?”

“Los Angeles,” Neal said. “Alex called me her bitch and bought me this horrible black fishnet shirt thing with--”

“You didn’t actually--I mean… Did you?” Peter asked. 

Neal sat up and leaned forward to look at Peter through his long black eyelashes. His lips were still a little swollen from being bitten and thoroughly kissed the night before and he ran his tongue over the bottom one. “Don’t you think I’d make a killing if I did?” he asked. 

Peter put a hand out to tuck Neal’s chin under his fingers and touched his thumb to his lip. Neal pressed his teeth against the pad and licked it. “Yeah, I do,” Peter said honestly. “Nice redirect, too, Caffrey. You didn’t answer the question.”

Neal smiled against the tip of Peter’s thumb. “No, Peter, I’ve never fucked anyone for money,” he said. “So, you want to come over later or not?”

“I shouldn’t,” Peter said. 

“But you want to,” Neal guessed. He stood up from the bed and put his hat on, tilted at a cocky angle. “We’ll talk.”

“About what--Oh. Oh, about that,” Peter said.

“We don’t have to,” Neal said, sounding hopeful. “We can have a drink, go to bed, you slip out early like a dirty little secret, and we don’t have to talk about it at all.”

Peter sighed heavily and shook his head. “No, we do,” he said. 

“Alright,” Neal said, leaving the bedroom. Peter followed him as far as the doorway to watch him leave. “Have a nice time at Drayton’s. I’ll see you later. Be careful.”

Neal caught a cab home and found Mozzie kicked back on his sofa with a glass of Burgundy when he got there. Mozzie had played a few games of pinochle with June earlier and the cards were still on the table. Neal walked over to look down at the table as he yanked his tie loose. 

“So, June won,” he said. 

Mozzie didn’t open his eyes. He made a sound of appreciation in his throat as he sipped his wine. “I let her win a hand,” he said. “I am, after all, a gentleman.”

“Mhmm, did you find out anything else about the music box?” Neal asked. “About Fowler?”

“No, but something interesting did happen when the lady suit was here,” Mozzie said. “June brought up some papers for her to look at because she didn’t understand them. Or she did and couldn’t quite believe what they said out of moral indignation, which I can completely sympathize with in--”

“What were the papers, Moz?” Neal asked. 

“Oh, ah, it would seem that the feds--your fed in particular--gave June some forms to fill out regarding your cushy digs here,” Mozzie said. He drank some more wine, taking his time about it. “They’re giving her the option to set a curfew for you. She can give you rules designed to ‘prevent a criminal relapse.’”

“Great,” Neal said dryly. He sat down in the chair across from Mozzie and tossed his hat back on the bed behind himself. “What did June say?”

“She said you’re doing fine and refused, of course,” Mozzie said. “But it’s still bureaucratic infringement on--”

“Moz, not right now, okay?” Neal said tiredly. “She said no, so it’s fine. It’s fine.”

“Oh, they’ll find another way. They’ll come up with something else. Before you know it, you’ll be--Sorry. Ah… Neal, what’s wrong?” Mozzie said. 

“I slept with Peter,” Neal said. 

Mozzie’s eyes popped wide. “You didn’t,” he said. When Neal just looked at him and didn’t tell him it was a joke or cop to the lie, he said, “You did. Jesus, Neal.”

“Yeah. That’s not the bad part though,” Neal said. 

“There’s a _worse_ part?” Mozzie asked. “You’re sleeping with the enemy. How could it get _worse_?”

“I’ve slept with the enemy before,” Neal said dismissively. 

“Not with the _federal_ enemy!” Mozzie said. “Neal, you’re giving them all the power. Don’t you remember? You said it yourself. The power dynamic is completely _off_. There’s no sliding scale here. There’s no healthy way for a relationship--if it is one--like this to end. Get out while you can.”

Neal shook his head. “The bad part is, he wants to talk--”

“Of _course_ he wants to talk. They always want to _talk_ ,” Mozzie said. “That’s how they get you.”

“About when I was in prison,” Neal finished like Mozzie hadn’t interrupted. 

Mozzie guzzled the wine in his glass and set it down to refill it. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said. “It’s about power. You give him a little--or in this case a lot--and he’ll just demand all of it. Everything. Give him this and you might as well just let him put a collar and a leash on you, because--”

“It’s not like that,” Neal said. “He cares. He does. And it’s just… it’s there and he can’t _not_ see it. If I talk about it, he can see it, he can see around it, he’ll get some closure.”

“Who _cares_?” Mozzie said. “Neal, seriously, who cares if he does? That’s not about him, it’s about you. He put you there and then forgot about you except for on birthdays and when you broke out again. Maybe he doesn’t care as much as you think.”

“He does,” Neal said. There were a lot of little things and a few big ones that had gone a long way toward convincing him of this. Peter might not love him, not like he loved his wife or his job, but he did care and the rest might come in time. “I said we’d talk about it. He’s coming over later and we’re going to talk about it.”

“Then here,” Mozzie said, giving Neal his own empty wine glass, which he leaned over to fill. “You’re going to need this.”

Neal drank some and sighed. He sat forward to take his tie off and remove his jacket, then sat back and rolled his head on his shoulders a little, trying to relax. “He’s a good man, Mozzie,” Neal said. “And I’m not. And, work or play, that’s always going to be a problem.”

“You’re a good man, too,” Mozzie said. “You’re just not… You’re not that kind of man. You‘ll kill yourself trying to be.”

Neal smiled faintly. “Who says I’m trying?” he said. “Look, it’s fine. You even said it, I need to talk about it, right?”

“To be fair, when I said that, I was thinking something more therapeutic that would come with a doctor/patient confidentiality agreement,” Mozzie said. 

“I can’t stand shrinks,” Neal said. 

“Me either. They ask too many questions,” Mozzie said. 

“So, Peter’s coming over after he has dinner with our suspect,” Neal said. He let his voice drop to throw a hint at Mozzie, but Mozzie just nodded and continued to sit there peacefully drinking his wine. “Mozzie. Peter’s coming over.”

Mozzie looked at him and frowned, then light dawned and he jumped up from the couch. “Oh. Right. Ah… I guess I’ll see you later. Tomorrow. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He drank the rest of the wine in his glass and put the glass down before he hurriedly left.

Neal sat in his chair for a minute smiling after he had left before he got up and went to change out of his suit. He was thinking that large canvas against the wall might be good for a Matisse, though he was really in more of a Jackson Pollack sort of mood and thought that might just be a waste, so maybe he’d let that one sit and think on it. There was a smaller canvas, perfect for a Raphael, just the right size for a rider and a dragon.

~~*~~

Neal was bent over the smaller canvas, working in the background of _Saint George and the Dragon_ when Peter arrived. He put his brush down, opened the door and just stood there while Peter looked him over. Peter looked a little stunned and Neal wasn’t so vain that he believed it was all because he had answered the door without a shirt on. 

“What happened?” Neal asked. He pulled Peter inside and closed the door. “Did something happen at dinner?”

“No,” Peter said. “I mean, yeah. He offered me a job, but that’s not… I saw John.”

“Oh,” Neal said. He went to the fridge and found one of Peter’s beers hiding in the back of the top shelf. He gave it to him and sat down at the dining table. “So, how’d that go?”

“I went home to get a change of clothes,” Peter said. “I’m not good at packing and this case looks like it’s going to be all week. Another day at least, but probably longer. And there he was. Spending the weekend with El and he was… He shook my hand.”

“What’s he like?” Neal asked. He couldn’t help it, he was curious by nature. 

“He’s _nice_ ,” Peter said. 

“You sound surprised,” Neal said. 

“No. No, it’s not… I mean, it’s Elizabeth, of course he’s nice, but it’s just… Here, I have a picture.” 

Peter got his phone out of his pocket and searched for it. He held the phone out to Neal and Neal stood up to look. John was tall and lean like a runner or a swimmer. He had a tan and dark hair that curled around his ears and the nape of his neck. In the picture, he was smiling at Elizabeth and he had one of those rare smiles that made his mouth turn up on the outside. A Cheshire Cat smile. Peter smiled like that, too. Neal had always liked it. John was about five years younger than Peter, maybe even a couple years younger than Elizabeth. He was looking at Elizabeth and she looked back and there was something there. Neal had seen Elizabeth look at Peter exactly that way a hundred times before. 

Neal whistled through his teeth. “Nice,” he said. 

Peter scowled at him. “What do you mean, nice?”

“I mean, I can see why you think he’s nice,” Neal said. He smiled in a teasing way and went to get himself a drink. The bottle of rosé he had been thinking about earlier was still in the rack and unopened. He opened it. 

“That’s not why--Oh. Oh, I see what you’re doing,” Peter said. 

“What am I doing?” Neal asked. He sipped his wine and poured a little more in the glass. “You like him and right now you’re mad about that. You didn’t want to like him. You wanted to keep not liking him the way you were doing before you met him.”

“Don’t turn this around on me,” Peter said. “I’m not the one who--”

“Well, technically, you are. Both of you,” Neal said. “You took a little longer, maybe more persuasion, but you got there in the end.”

“You like him and you haven’t even _met_ him,” Peter said, still annoyed about it. 

“I like looking at him,” Neal said. “He’s hot. Why were you taking pictures of your wife’s boyfriend anyway?”

“To show it to you,” Peter said. 

“So I could sympathize with your pain,” Neal said. “That’s sweet.”

“I am not sweet,” Peter grumbled. He sat down at the table with Neal and opened his beer. “This is possibly the most screwed up thing that has ever happened to me.”

“Which part?” Neal asked. 

“ _All_ of it,” Peter said. He drank his beer. “I’m not supposed to like my wife’s boyfriend.”

“I don’t see why not,” Neal said. “Elizabeth likes me.”

“You’re not my boyfriend,” Peter said. 

Neal shrugged and drank his wine. He had drank a glass with Mozzie and finished off the bottle of Burgundy when he was gone. This was his fourth or fifth glass and he was a little bit buzzed. He was feeling pretty good, though still not looking forward to the conversation Peter was there to have. 

“Peter,” he said, reaching over to hook his fingers in the waist of Peter’s trousers. Peter tensed but he didn’t jerk away. He was still off balance about the whole having sex with Neal Caffrey thing. Neal thought it was cute. “Come here.” He stood and pulled Peter up. Peter got to his feet willingly enough, but he still eyed Neal warily as Neal moved up against him. “I’m really glad Kent didn’t poison you.”

Peter smiled. It seemed involuntary, like he didn’t want to and was trying not to, but it spread slowly. “So am I,” he said. “How much of that pink shit did you drink before I got here?”

“None,” Neal said. “I just opened that bottle. You saw me do it.”

“How many other bottles did you open before I got here then?” Peter asked. 

“None,” Neal said again. He smiled. “Mozzie opened it for me and drank half of it before he left. I drank the rest. It was a big bottle though.”

“You’re drunk,” Peter said. 

“Nope,” Neal said. He picked up his wine glass from the table and managed to squeeze it between himself and Peter to drink some. “I can finish this though, then maybe. Mhmm.”

Peter huffed out a breath and gently took the wine glass out of his hand. He put it back on the table. “I really didn’t want to have this conversation while you were drunk,” he said. 

“Well, that’s mean,” Neal said. He reached over and picked the glass back up. He drank it down before Peter could take it away from him again. “I mean… if you went to prison and--”

“I wouldn’t go to prison,” Peter said. “I would never put myself in a situation that would land me in prison.”

“Shh,” Neal said, putting a finger to his mouth. “ _If_ you went to prison, and if you were raped in prison, then you got out and someone important to you needed to hear about it--”

“Important to you--”

“ _Shh_ , Peter, God,” Neal said. “If you were raped in prison--and you would be, trust me--wouldn’t you want to be a little drunk when you had to talk about it? Hmm? Yeah, you would. I do. I’m not though. I need another one, I think.”

Neal stepped away from Peter and started back toward the counter where he’d left the bottle of rosé, but Peter slipped an arm around him turned him back toward the table. “I think you’ve had enough,” he said. “Otherwise I won’t even understand the words coming out of your mouth.”

Neal snickered and put his arms around Peter’s neck when he tried to push him into a chair. “You know how they say it’s like reliving it?” Neal asked, whispering it in Peter’s ear. He kissed the side of his neck. “It isn’t. But… it’s close enough.”

“Alright, Neal,” Peter said. He walked Neal backward across the room to his bed. When he tried to dump him onto it, Neal wouldn’t let him go and Peter had to take his arms from around his neck. “Maybe we don’t have to talk about it right now.”

Neal grabbed Peter around the waist and pulled him down with him. Peter went to his knees on the edge of the mattress and let Neal pull his tie off and push his jacket down his arms. When the fabric was bunched and straining at his elbows, Peter shrugged it off himself. Neal started plucking at the buttons of his shirt and Peter let him unfasten them until he began pulling the shirt untucked from Peter’s pants to take it off. Peter gently took his hands and held them for a minute, eyes on Neal’s face as Neal stared back at him. He let them go and relaxed on the bed, laying on top of Neal with his arms braced on the mattress by his shoulders, petting the hair back from Neal’s face. 

“This is just another redirect, isn’t it? A distraction?” Peter asked him. “We’re not doing this. Not if that’s the reason.”

Neal dropped his eyes. “It would just be a bonus, not the reason,” he said. 

Peter moved off of him and lay on the bed beside him. Neal turned his head to look at him and Peter just slipped his arms around his waist and pulled him against him, on his side with his back to Peter’s chest.

“We’re spooning now?” Neal asked, amused. 

Peter put his face in the back of Neal’s hair and breathed out a soft laugh against the back of his ear. “Problem?”

“No,” Neal said. He squirmed back against him and smiled a little when Peter caught his breath. “No problem.”

“Neal, stop. We don’t have to talk about it,” Peter said. 

Neal sighed. “Yeah, I think we do,” he said. “It’s not going to get easier if I do it later and I’m already all…”

“Freaked out?” Peter said. 

“Yes,” Neal said. 

“You were in there for four years,” Peter said. “I’m sorry. It must have been--”

“It was,” Neal said. He put a hand back to rest it on Peter’s thigh. “Then when you all thought I was stupid enough to sign that fake pink diamond. But I was still alright then and you got me out, so… it was fine. I hadn’t been working with you that long. No one really knew what I was doing.”

“This time they did?” Peter asked. “That made it worse?”

Neal rolled his shoulder in a little shrug. “It didn’t make it better. I was used to it before. It sounds so bad… so _sick_ , but four years is a long time and I’ve just got one of those faces the new doesn’t wear off of.”

Peter didn’t say anything, didn’t tease him about it. It wasn’t said arrogantly or out of vanity, it was stated simply and he knew Neal was right. If he had ever thought much about Neal in prison when he was there, Peter would have known. The sad truth of it was, he hadn’t thought much about Neal at all until Neal walked out the front door almost four years later. He had thought about him probably as much as he thought about any other convict he put away. That hadn’t changed until later, when he was out.

“It’s funny what you can get used to,” Neal said. 

“You did what you had to,” Peter said. 

“Oh, Peter, if you knew some of the things I’ve had to do…” He took his hand away from Peter’s thigh and rested his folded arms over Peter’s around his waist. “This time, I fought too much. They knew I was a rat, but it still wouldn’t have been so bad if I had just remembered how to let it happen.”

“What you said to Robert Anderson, did that really happen?” Peter asked. “Were you--”

Neal twisted around and took one of Peter’s hands to lift it to the back of his head. “Feel right there, back of my right ear,” he said. 

Peter’s fingers brushed through his hair to the narrow scar on his scalp. It ran from just behind his right ear over his skull to just below the crown. “Jesus.”

“Bled like crazy, but I’m lucky they didn’t fracture my skull,” Neal said. “They weren’t--none of them--very happy with me.”

It was hard to hear Neal say that he was lucky after something like that. Peter put his arm back around him and gently squeezed, hugging him. “I’m sorry it took so long to get you out,” he said. “I was trying. I really was. But you… I visited you. You never said anything about any of this. You looked fine. You were smiling and joking like always. I never knew.”

“Peter, lying is what I do. I’m good at it,” Neal said. “I’d even say I’m one of the best. If I don’t want you to know something, you’re not going to know it.”

“And you didn’t want me to know,” Peter said. 

“No, of course not. What would be the point of that?” Neal asked. “Could you have gotten me out any faster?”

“No,” Peter said. “I could have done _something_.”

“No,” Neal said. “I spent the last week in the infirmary after they cornered me in the shower. The bruises healed, I had fifty-three stitches in my head, and you never knew and that’s the way I wanted it.”

“I wish you had told me,” Peter said. “Even if you couldn’t tell me all of it, if you had just said something.”

“You’re not the only one allowed to protect people you love, Peter,” Neal said. “I don’t do it the same way you do, but I didn’t want you to know. For you as much as for me.”

“You’re not weak, you know,” Peter said. “I wouldn’t have thought less of you. I _don’t_.”

“I know I’m not,” Neal said. “I’ve been to prison three times and it was this last one that finally broke me.”

“You’re not broken,” Peter said sharply. 

“I’m a little broken,” Neal said. 

“No.”

“Cracked, then.”

“You’ll get better,” Peter said. He took his arms from around Neal briefly so he could finish removing his shirt. “You’re already getting better.”

“Maybe,” Neal said. He thought about it quietly for a few minutes, then said, “I bet Keller would laugh himself to death if he knew.”

“Stop it,” Peter said. He pressed his mouth to back of Neal’s shoulder and smiled when Neal laughed and reached back to push at him. “Screw Keller.”

“No, thank you,” Neal said. “Peter, don’t you dare give me a hickey. What are we, in high school?”

Peter licked over the little red spot he’d put in Neal’s skin. It would fade in a few minutes. “What were you painting when I came in?” he asked. 

“Saint George and the Dragon,” Neal said. 

Peter laughed. “Better not let Sara see it,” he said. “She’ll think she’s gone and finally caught you.”

“For all of five minutes until they test it,” Neal said. “Maybe I’ll give it to her.”

“Oh, she’d love that,” Peter said sarcastically. 

“You think she’d pull a gun on me again?” Neal asked. 

“Maybe,” Peter said. 

“You’d protect me, right?”

Peter laughed. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Are we done talking about it?” Neal asked.

Peter’s smile disappeared and he sighed. “For now.”

“Good. Can I have more wine then?” 

“You have to work tomorrow,” Peter reminded him. “No wine.”

Neal frowned. He rolled over to face Peter and kissed him. “Fine,” he said between kisses. “Fine, but since you’re already here and conveniently mostly naked, I may be forced to take advantage of the situation.”

Peter grinned and kissed him back. “I’d expect nothing less from you.”

~~*~~

Friday, they almost lost Peter. 

Neal answered the phone and it was Mozzie. He had tracked the music box as far as it could be tracked and all roads lead to and ended with Peter. Peter was lying to him, hiding what he knew about it from him. Neal knew he shouldn’t be surprised by that, no matter what changes had occurred in the last few days. Peter was Agent Peter Burke and he would do anything he thought he had to do as Agent Peter Burke. Lying to Neal was probably the least of it. Still, it surprised him. It shocked him and it hurt. 

He barely had time to deal with the news and not nearly enough to accept it before he saw the recording device they had used to record Kent’s Latin password sticking out of Jessica Breslin’s purse. In his mind, he heard Peter saying he was worried because he wasn’t sure if Jessica wanted revenge or justice. He didn’t have to ask her if she had done something; he knew. He knew because, if it were him, if he were Jessica and Kent had killed someone he loved, someone like Kate or, God help him, Peter, he would want revenge. Even if justice was the right way and the only way to balance the chaos, he would take revenge because most people weren’t as noble as Peter. 

In a panic, Neal went into the building, evaded the guy at the front desk and hijacked the elevator. His hands were steady as he used his tie clip to open the control panel, put it back and hit the button for the 44th floor. 

Peter was unconscious on the floor of Kent’s office when Neal got there and for a terrifying, eternal moment, Neal thought he was already dead. He was still, but he hadn’t yet turned pale or gone cold, and when Neal got his arms under him and hefted him up, Peter struggled to help. He was breathing too hard, not getting any oxygen from it, and Neal tried to remember what Jessica had said about Joseph Hayes. How long had it taken him to die? Had she told them? Had she known?

Peter got enough breath to demand he go back for Kent and Neal wanted to hit him over the head like a baby seal just to make him stop being so noble, so righteous and sporting about the whole thing, so _irrational_. 

“You are _dying_ , Peter!” he shouted at him. 

Still, Peter insisted they not leave the murderous asshole behind. If Neal had his way, Wesley Kent would just die the same way Joseph Hayes had died and there was no one who could really convince him that wouldn’t be justice. But he was wasting time trying to argue with Peter about it and Kent wasn’t worth it. 

Neal ran back down the hall to Kent’s office and found him in the same place, sprawled over his sofa. He grabbed Kent’s legs and dragged him off the sofa to the floor. His head hit the floor with a resounding _thunk_ , but Neal just dragged him out of the office and back down the hall. He was terrified he might find Peter already dead in the short time it had taken him to rescue the murderous bastard. 

Peter was alive and once again unconscious. The elevator had come and gone and Neal frantically hit the DOWN button on the wall again. 

“Peter, don’t you do this,” Neal muttered, staring at the lights above the elevator as they ticked upward. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you die on me. I’m mad as hell with you about the music box and you’re not allowed to die until you at least tell me why you lied to me about it. Yeah, that’s right, I know. Mozzie looked into it and there’s _no way_ Diana just has it and you don’t know. I thought we were ‘working on this together,’ that’s what you said. You remember? Hey! Peter, wake up!”

The elevator arrived and Neal almost swooned when paramedics flooded out of it, shoved him out of the way and went to work. Peter didn’t wake up when he was lifted onto a gurney and they pulled his shirt open to check his vitals. His head lolled in a slack way that made Neal’s stomach flip somersaults of anxiety and fear. 

“His heart’s stopped,” a paramedic said. 

Neal barely heard them. He was softly whispering, “Come on, come on,” under his breath and staring at Peter. He didn’t blink, he didn’t quite dare. 

Another paramedic passed the first one a syringe and he drove it hard into Peter’s chest. Adrenalin, Neal thought. They did the same thing with junkies when they overdosed. 

Peter’s eyes snapped open and he shuddered. His eyes were walling and his breathing was labored, but he was alive. His heart was beating again. He was going to live. 

Neal followed the gurney out of the building and watched Peter arrest Kent while he was barely conscious. After Diana had left him, gone to take Jessica Breslin away for attempted murder, Neal stood there and didn’t know what to do. He watched the ambulance leave and looked around, not sure where to go. He felt useless and helpless. He wanted to be in the back of that ambulance with Peter, but of course he couldn’t be. It wasn’t his place. He wouldn’t even be welcome at the hospital until well after Peter was out of the woods. 

Neal left and walked to the end of the sidewalk, hoping to hail a taxi. While he stood there, he took his phone out of his pocket and called Peter’s house. Elizabeth answered, sounding relaxed and half asleep. 

“Hello?”

“Elizabeth.”

“Neal?” There was a rustling sound as she sat up and moved. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Peter.”

“What? Neal, what happened to Peter?”

“They’re taking him to the hospital. He was poisoned.” Neal rested his head on his fingers and pinched the bridge of his nose. He felt like he should be doing something, but all he could think to do was call Peter’s wife. “Elizabeth?”

“I’m getting my purse. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Elizabeth was saying. “How did this happen?!”

“It’s… I don’t… I don’t know what to do,” Neal confessed. “Elizabeth, I don’t know what to do.”

“Which hospital?” Elizabeth demanded. “Neal, where are they taking my husband?”

“I don’t know,” Neal realized. He turned to look back toward the Novice building, but he didn’t see anyone he knew that he could ask. “I don’t know. Diana or Jones would probably know. They didn’t tell me.”

“Honey, where are you?” Elizabeth asked. 

“I’m… I’m outside,” Neal said. He heard himself and realized how completely unhelpful that was. “Novice Systems. I’m just down the street. I was going to get a cab, but I don’t know where to go and they wouldn’t let me in even if I--”

“Stay there,” Elizabeth said. “Just stay there. John’s going to come get you. They will let you in if I tell them to let you in or I’ll tell them exactly where they can go. Stay there.”

Elizabeth hung up and Neal blinked down at his phone for a second before disconnecting. “Okay,” he said. 

Neal went over to lean against the wall of the building and ended up sliding down to sit on the sidewalk against it, his face in his hands. He wasn’t crying. His eyes actually felt painfully dry. He kept telling himself that Peter would be fine. He had to be fine. He had just arrested Kent and somehow managed to give Neal a parting lecture about doing the right thing no matter what before they put him in the back of an ambulance . If he weren’t going to be fine, would he have been doing that? Although this was Peter, so maybe. Probably. Damn him. 

Neal had been sitting there for a little over fifteen minutes when a blue Dodge truck pulled up to the corner and honked its horn. He didn’t look up immediately because car horns in New York weren’t any special thing. Cab drivers laid on the horn at red lights and average New York City drivers weren’t much better. The truck honked again, this time a little longer. Neal finally looked up and recognized John from the photograph Peter had showed to him on his phone. 

“Thought you were asleep there for a minute,” John said when Neal got in the truck beside him. “El’s at the hospital. You alright?”

Neal nodded and fastened his seatbelt as John pulled into traffic and started dodging between cars. 

“I’m John, by the way,” John said. 

“I know,” Neal said. “I’m Neal.”

“I know,” John said. “This probably ain’t the time to talk about you and me and them, is it?” 

“No, it’s really not,” Neal said. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“Hey, man, no problem,” John said. “I’d want you to do the same for me if it were Elizabeth, you know what I mean?”

Neal smiled and sank down in his seat tiredly. The adrenalin rush that had galvanized him into action when he saw Peter laid out on the floor had worn off and now he was left feeling numb, stupid and tired. “Yeah, I know. I don’t drive much though.”

“Well, you can catch me a cab then,” John said. He ran through a yellow light. “We’ll be there in a minute. Always assuming I don’t cream a light pole, but hell. Not much chance of that.”

~~*~~

Elizabeth pulled some kind of mama bear act with the nurses over Neal that Neal would have found more amusing if he weren’t so emotionally haywire. It seemed to work because they left him alone and he was allowed to sit in Peter’s room with Elizabeth and John. At one point, Elizabeth asked him to tell her how it had happened and Neal, watching Peter sleep as he talked, told her about Jessica Breslin and Joseph Hayes, the microprocessor and the poison in the Armagnac, about what Peter had said about justice and revenge. There was very little inflection to his voice as he spoke and he caught John and Elizabeth exchanging those annoying speaking glances that couples had over his head while he talked. 

“That poor girl,” Elizabeth said when Neal finished. 

Neal turned his head to stare at her and blinked. “What?”

“Jessica. I feel sorry for her. This horrible man murders someone she cares about and now she’s going to prison too,” Elizabeth said. “I suppose they had to arrest her though.”

“She could have killed Peter,” Neal said dully. 

“Yes, which is why she never should have done such a thing,” Elizabeth said. “She couldn’t have known who would drink it. What a stupid way to murder such a man. There must be hundreds of people in and out of that building every day.”

“She probably wasn’t thinking clearly,” Neal said, returning his attention to Peter. “Better not let Peter hear you talk like that. You’ll get the lecture.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Sweetheart, I’ve had the lecture,” she said. 

Neal smiled at her. Of course she had had the lecture. Instead of feeling envious about it though, he experienced an odd sense of kinship with Elizabeth. They would never exchange those annoying looks that couples had that always seemed like some sort of bizarre ESP, but they might have looks of their own because they both loved Peter and he was their common ground. He and Peter had those looks. He could look a certain way at Peter and Peter knew exactly what he wanted to say. Peter did the same with him. They spent a lot of time communicating wordlessly when stuck in a room with a suspect, a witness or with Hughes. 

“I think we can probably make this work,” Elizabeth said abruptly. 

Neal frowned at her. “What?”

Elizabeth pointed around at them all, at John, Neal, Peter and herself, and said, “This. Don’t you think so?”

Neal looked around at them and considered it. He had helped her devise the plan to keep her boyfriend and not lose her husband mostly on a whim and because he liked her and didn’t want to see her unhappy and crying on his sofa. There was a calm, relaxed feeling of companionship sitting there with all of them though. He didn’t envy Elizabeth the things she knew, the things she had, that were Peter’s. He had things of his own. He knew things. Some of his things were the same as hers, but not all of them. They weren’t like other people. It hadn’t driven a wedge between them, made him and Elizabeth resent one another. It had drawn them closer when they had already been friends. They both loved Peter and were possessive with that love, but not with each other. They never had been. 

Neal nodded. “Peter likes you,” he told John. 

John seemed surprised. “Really? He didn’t act like it.”

“He told me,” Neal said. “He doesn’t like it, but he does. Like you, I mean. Says you’re a nice guy.”

“He is,” Elizabeth said. She leaned her head against John’s arm. “Peter’s going to be okay, Neal. The nurse said he’s just resting. Sedated.”

“Bet he didn’t like that,” Neal said. 

Peter opened his eyes and looked around at them. “ _He_ can hear you, you know,” he croaked. He winced and scrunched his eyes closed. “My god.”

Neal shifted anxiously closer to the bed, on the edge of his seat. “How do you feel?”

“Like I almost died,” Peter said bluntly. “How the hell did you get in here, Caffrey?”

“I let him,” Elizabeth said, stepping into Peter’s line of sight. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”

Peter acknowledged the jab with a smile. “I guess it was,” he said. They shared one of those looks and Neal rolled his eyes. Peter saw it and wiggled his fingers in a beckoning gesture until Neal gave him his hand. “You went back for Kent,” he said. “Thank you. I know you didn’t want to.”

Neal shook his head. “You could have died while I was getting him, Peter,” he said. “You’re an idiot sometimes.”

“So are you,” Peter said. “So, we’re even.”

Neal shook his head again, remembering the phone call he had gotten from Mozzie right before he saw the recorder in Jessica’s purse. He didn’t mention it, but Peter must have understood there was something else and it wasn’t about him being stupid or about Kent at all. He nodded and he didn’t have to say anything for Neal to understand it meant they would talk about it later. Peter would almost certainly lie to him anyway, but Neal knew that and he could forgive him. Peter was the only person he had ever known who could lie to his face and make Neal want to believe him. 

“Honey, do you need something?” Elizabeth asked Peter. “Do you want me to get the nurse?”

Peter felt around on the bed with the hand Neal wasn’t holding for the call button and held it up for her to see. If he needed anything, he would use it. “I’ll need someone to take Neal home,” he said. His voice still sounded like his vocal cords had been scraped raw with sandpaper. 

“No, Peter,” Neal said. 

“You can’t be here,” Peter said. 

Hurt, Neal took his hand back and sat back in his chair. “Alright.”

“No. See, you’re doing it,” Peter said, irritated with his own inability to speak well. “The idiot thing.”

Neal’s eyes narrowed to bright blue slits. “ _I’m_ the idiot?” he demanded. “Which one of us went up to the office of a poisoning murderer and _had a drink with him_? This after I _told_ you, Peter. You remember the frat party rule? Yeah. So, if anyone’s an idiot right now, it’s you.”

“He did save your life, hon,” Elizabeth said. 

Peter tried to sit up, didn’t have the strength for it, and slumped back down in the bed. “What the hell are you talking about, Caffrey?” he asked. “You know you can’t be here when they come to take my statement about what happened up there. How would that look?”

“Oh,” Neal said, deflating. “Right.”

“Right,” Peter said. He looked relieved that he had made himself understood. “Neal?”

“What?” Neal asked. 

“This was all your fault, wasn’t it?” he asked, waving a hand around at all of them standing and sitting around his bed. “You conned me.”

Neal sighed. “I only tried to help Elizabeth,” he said. “That was the idea anyway. She was upset. She didn’t want a divorce--”

“I don’t,” Elizabeth said. 

“She didn’t want to give up John,” Neal said. “She figured she’d made a pretty big mess of things and didn’t know what to do. So… I just told her it might help things if she didn’t believe us.”

“Believe us?” Peter asked. 

“When we said we weren’t… you know,” Neal said. 

“Oh,” Peter said. “But we _weren’t_.”

“I know. But if she thought we were, well it would make it a lot harder for you to be mad about it,” Neal said. 

“No it _wouldn’t_ ,” Peter said. 

“But it did, hon,” Elizabeth said. “You were upset, but you weren’t as mad as I know you can get. You didn’t even try to stalk me so you could find John and have him arrested or anything.”

“Which I can tell you, I appreciate,” John said. 

Peter scowled at them all. “Fine,” he said at last. 

“Fine?” Elizabeth asked, hopeful. “What do you mean, fine?”

“I mean fine, I don’t seem to have much choice, do I?” Peter said. “It was bullshit before, but now it’s not, and I can’t exactly stand up on my soapbox and get all pissed off about it if I can’t even say I’m not screwing around with someone else too, can I?”

“It usually doesn’t stop you,” Neal said. 

“What?” Peter and Elizabeth both asked. 

“Being wrong. It doesn’t usually stop you from standing on your soapbox,” Neal said. 

Peter glared at him. “We’re going to talk when I get out of here,” he said. “Monday, we’re talking.”

Neal shrugged. “Sure.”

“Now get out of here so I can be alone with my wife and let my blood pressure go back down,” Peter said, pointing to Neal and John. “Both of you.”

Neal looked at John and stood. “Give you a ride?” John asked. 

“Thanks,” Neal said, following him out of the room. 

“And Caffrey?” Peter called. 

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

Neal waved it off. Peter had already thanked him, but maybe he had forgotten. He had been drugged, after all. And poisoned. Neal was sure it was the sort of thing Mozzie would have a theory involving chemical reactions and brain damage about. He smiled. 

“Is he always like that?” John asked as they left the hospital. 

“Who, Peter?” Neal asked. “Most of the time.”

John shrugged. “Glad I picked the wife,” he said. 

Neal laughed. John joined him a second later and an unspoken bit of shared understanding passed between them. Neal felt a lot better as he rode in John’s truck this time back to June’s. Peter was going to be okay. He was going to be back to harassing Neal and making snide remarks about his anklet and his criminal record in no time. Then there was this, whatever it was, and it looked more and more like it was going to work and he liked that. He liked that he might be able to keep Peter a little longer than he had imagined and not lose Elizabeth’s friendship after all. And he liked John, who seemed to like most people. 

When they got to June’s, Neal got out of the truck, but stood by the door and hesitated, looking between the house and John in the driver’s seat watching him expectantly. Finally, he closed the door and leaned in the open window. “Do you like Shiraz?” he asked. 

John considered it. “I don’t know, but I’d be willing to try it,” he said. He looked at the house and raised his eyebrows. “You live here?”

“Yeah, come on,” Neal said. He pushed away from the truck and started up the walk. John turned the engine off and followed him. “There’s a great view and you can meet Mozzie. His head’s going to explode when we explain this all to him.”

**XXX**


End file.
